Zaphod's Trial
by Radioactive
Summary: Six years after Zaphod stole the Heart of Gold, the police finally nab him, and he's sent to court. Finally updated! To my loyal fan, I'm very sorry. Let's just pretend my computer was down. For two years.
1. Enter Hazel

Author's Notes: Altough I'm sorry to say that _A New Friend_ is just a one time thing, thank you for the rave reviews! I hope this is good too (not a one time thing).

**Shekaoel Spaceport, Hirshal**

**June 14, 2011**

**2:12 PM**

_"Yesterday, police said that they have received three photos that are believed to contain the image of Zaphod Beeblebrox._

_Six years ago, Beeblebrox, who was at the time the President of the Galaxy, stole the new governmental starship the G.I.S. Heart of Gold at its launching ceremony._

_Beeblebrox was last seen on the newly discovered planet Magrathea, in captivity of police, but an ether imbalance in the airwaves caused one of the supercomputers in the building to explode. Beeblebrox, and the three others he was with, were lost in the explosion.  
Confirmed reports show that the explosion acted as a time warp, transporting Beeblebrox several hundred million years into the future to Milliways restaurant. There, Beeblebrox added onto his criminal record with the theft of the stunt ship of the band Disaster Area, which the lead singer, Hotblack Desiato, was going to launch at the concert several days later, yet millions of years in the past._

_Disaster Area's remote control sensors indicated the use of the onboard teleportation device, which showed that Beeblebrox was not killed in the crash of the stunt ship into the local star of the planet the concert was taking place on._

_After that, Beeblebrox managed to evade the police for several months, until he was tracked down at Barnard Star, trying to board a ship to Betelgeuse VII. He escaped again by causing a fake bomb threat as a diversion, and managed to board a bus trip out somewhere East. His current locations have been unknown since then._

_Though police may have located him, through an anonymous contributor given into the Federal Office in Proximus Centuri. They have recently analysed three photos taken at the Dsiban Spaceport, and have already confirmed the reports of this as the location of Beeblebrox as virtually definite."_

The radio switched off.

Hazel took his headset off and stuffed it in his carry-on backpack. He groaned loudly and slumped back into the uncomfortable plastic seat.

An announcement then came over the loudspeaker.

"Flight 918 to Delrassian," said the voice. "Final boarding call. The next available flight to Delrassian is in about 16 hours. If this information is relevant to you, then I don't know why you came to the spaceport 16 hours too early. But all will all others on a flight to Delrassian please make your way to the terminal. Thank you."

"Oh, great," muttered Hazel. "I'm late."

Hazel was about 27, with long dirty blond hair and an unshaven face. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked very tired. He was wearing cargo pants and a pale green sweatshirt with his black backpack, and he had just turned off his sub-ether radio upon seeing there was nothing good playing on the music stations, so there was only news, which he hadn't liked listening to for a while.

He grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. Luckily, he had found a seat close to the door, so he so he only had to walk through about five waiting rooms to get to the terminal. He didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing, since he hated the tedious ID checking, but it would mean he could get onto his ship quicker.

After a very long time, Hazel found himself at the front of the line. He hadn't noticed, since he was half-asleep.

The clerk at the desk said, "Passport, please."

He shoved his hand into his backpack, and finally retrieved his wallet. He handed her his passport.

She quickly surveyed it to see if the information matched the man standing in front of her.

The passport said this:

_Surname_

_Xorbed_

_Given Names_

_Hazel Epobb_

_Citizenship_

_Rigellian_

_Date of Birth_

_26/9/16/3_

_Gender_

_Male_

_Place of Birth_

_Rigel IX_

_Date of Issue_

_32/12/17/4_

The clerk looked back at him. He looked that age, and the picture did match.

"VR card," said the clerk.

Hazel handed her his Voice Recognition card.

VR cards were a type of ID card that makes sure that the voice of whoever owns it matches the voice of whoever bought it. It's sort of like a tape recorder, but about the size of a tiny dent in the plastic card.

The clerk pressed one of the buttons on the VR card.

"Hazel Epobb Xorbed," said Hazel into the card.

The clerk pressed another button on the VR card. The word Match appeared.

"RR card," said the clerk.

Hazel handed her his Retinal Recognition card.

RR cards had basically the same principle of a VR card, except using eyes instead of voice.

The clerk pressed one of the buttons on the RR card.

Hazel pressed his eye against the tiny glass bulb on the card.

The clerk pressed another button on the RR card. The word Match appeared.

The clerk handed Hazel back his ID cards.

"Have a nice flight. Thank you for choosing Western Spaceways."

"Whatever."

Hazel trudged through the tunnel, and just as he was nearing the door, he heard shouting coming from the desk at the end of the tunnel.

Just then, five policemen came running up, MDB guns aimed at him.

"Freeze!" yelled the sergeant.

"What the hell?" yelled Hazel.

"You're under arrest for four counts of spacecraft theft!"

"Spacecraft theft? I have no idea what the hell you're talking about!"

"Give it up, Beeblebrox!"

"Beeblebrox? Wait a second…oh, son of a bitch…that guy on the radio! No, no, no, no! It's not me! You've got the complete wrong person!"

"Give it up. We know who you are."

"How the hell did you come to that conclusion?"

"Come with us."

The sergeant grabbed Hazel and snapped his hands in lithium handcuffs.

"We'll tell you on the way there," said the cop.


	2. Interrogation

**Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Centre, Damogram**

**June 15, 2011**

**6:58 PM**

The Damogram Law Enforcement Centre was headquarters for all law enforcement in the Galaxy. Since Damogram was such a secret government planet, only the heads of each sect of law enforcement were aloud in.

Hazel had been placed in a holding cell in the Galactic Federal Police section until someone had been ready to interrogate him. He could see someone reporting to someone else about his arrest.

"Great news."

"Oh?"

"We just solved a cold case."

"Really?"

"Yes. We have the guy in captivity."

"Who is it?"

"Zaphod Beeblebrox."

"No shit. Really?"

"Yeah, positive."

Hazel rolled his eyes.

"How'd you get him?"

"Those photos we got a few days ago. We noticed he was at a hotel reserved for people waiting for flights down at Shekaoel."

"At Hirshal?"

"Mm-hmm. We went straight there. He had almost left the terminal when we got him."

"How do you know it's him?"

"We're mostly relying on interrogation, but we've got some clues."

"Great job, man."

* * *

After about 15 minutes, a guard came up to Hazel's cell and said they were ready for interrogation. He escorted him about 40 floors up, where he was put in Interrogation Room C16, which a small, dark room with a one-way mirror on one side. The guard sat him down at a table in the middle of the room, and went and stood beside the door. And interrogator came in and sat down at the table across him. He had a suitcase with him.

"Good afternoon," he said.

"Hey," said Hazel.

"My name is Sergeant Hoksh. I'm here to see if we can work out this misconception. Your name is?"

"Hazel Xorbed."

"Really?"

"No, I actually forgot my name 18 seconds ago. I'm just guessing now."

"Alright, Hazel. Now, the police are positive that you are Zaphod Beeblebrox, a man who is guilty of stealing about four spacecrafts in his life."

"Oh, they think I'm a felon? And here I thought I was thrown in jail 'cause they like my company."

"This is anything but funny."

"I'm serious."

"So is this."

"I thought this was a circus."

"Do you want to go to jail?"

"Is there cotton candy?"

"Mr. Xorbed, please!"

"Okay, fine."

"We have substantial evidence that you are just Zaphod Beeblebrox is disguise."

"Oh? I thought you guys arrested my on a gut feeling."

"Look at this."

Hoksh opened up the suitcase and took out three 8x10 photos.

"Is this you?" he asked, holding up one photo of a man walking into a hotel.

"Let's see…what does that sign in the background say? Shemhel? Yeah, that hotel I stayed in last week…yeah, that's me."

"And this?"

Hoksh held up a photo of Shemhel that seemed to be taken across the street with a zoom lens. It showed a man walking past the balcony window in a room on one of the top floors.

"Hmm…what room was I in? Yeah, that's me."

"And this?"

A photo of a man crossing the street.

"Yeah, that's me."

"You know that we received three photos of who we think is you a few days ago?"

"I know."

"These aren't them."

"Come again?"

"These are file photos of Zaphod Beeblebrox, taken 7 years ago."

"What?"

"And you just identified them as you."

"Oh, this is not good."

"Can I have a sample of your hair?"

"What?"

"Another test."

"Fine," said Hazel.

Hazel pulled out a few strands from his dirty blond hair.

Hokshopened up the suitcase and pulled out a tiny plastic sac with some other strands of hair in it.

"Colours match," he said. "But just to make sure…"

He pulled out a test tube filled with a clear liquid from the suitcase. He dropped Hazel's hair into the liquid. The liquid turned a dark muddy shade of grey-brown.

"Just as I thought. This is dye."

"You can tell that?" asked Hazel nervously.

"Yes. And you're wearing dye."

"Oh, God no."

"And plus…"

"There's more?"

"What's your full name once again?"

"Hazel Epobb Xorbed."

Hoksh paused for a second, as if working something out in his head.

"What do you find the names Hazel Epobb Xorbed and Zaphod Beeblebrox have in common?"

"I don't know," lied Hazel.

"One is a perfect anagram of the other."

He took out a piece of paper and a pencil from the suitcase, wrote down the two names, and showed the paper to Hazel.

ZAPHODBEEBLEBROX  
HAZELEPOBBXORBED

"A perfect match," said Hoksh. "Do we need to show you more evidence, or will you just admit that you're Zaphod Beeblebrox?"

"One more, just for the road."

"Take off your sweatshirt."

Hazel, reluctantly, did.Inside his faded white T-Shirt, he had three arms.

"There you are. Another piece of proof. Zaphod Beeblebrox's three arms," said Hoksh. "Now, kindly follow me, Mr. Beeblebrox."

"Oh, Zarquon," said Zaphod.


	3. The Others

**Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Centre, Damogram**

**June 15, 2011**

**8:37 PM**

_> Organisms_

_Machines_

_McMillian, Tricia_

_Checking names..._

_Searching..._

_Subject found._

_Astrophysicist_

_ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha_

_Planet unknown_

_Deceased_

_Prefect, Ford_

_Checking names..._

_Searching..._

_Subject found._

_Writer_

_ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha_

_Planet unknown_

_Deceased_

_Dent, Arthur_

_Checking names..._

_Searching..._

_Subject not found. Please verify your query._

_Dent, Arthur Phillip_

_Checking names..._

_Searching..._

_Subject not found. Please verify your query._

_Organisms_

_> Machines_

_SCC Prototype 4628 "Marvin"_

_Checking names..._

_Searching..._

_Subject found._

_SC8 JK Iota_

_Preliumtarn_

_Deceased_

* * *

"What happened?" 

"What do you mean, what happened?"

"Those names you gave us."

"Yeah? What about them?"

"They came up negative."

"They did?"

"Yes."

"That's impossible. Ford Prefect's my semi-cousin, just look under Beeblebrox and root around a bit. And you have to have Trillian, she was federally approved by a DNA bank, so she's definitely on file. And SCC's no doubt got a file on Marvin, they signed him over to the government—"

"No, it's not that."

"What?"

"The names were in our file. All except _Arthur Dent_."

"Interesting. So what's the problem?"

"The three that did come up were displayed as _Deceased_."

"Deceased? Oh my God, they're dead?"

"And for _Tricia McMillian_ and _Ford Prefect_, it said _Planet unknown_."

"It did?" said Zaphod.

"That's right," said Hoksh.

By now, Zaphod had come to terms with the fact that he had now reprised his role as Zaphod Beeblebrox, and not Hazel Xorbed. Though he was rather discouraged, seeing as he though Hazel was a really nice name.

Zaphod paused, and suddenly something in his head clicked.

"What had Ford said when I was introduced to Arthur?" he thought in his head to himself. His dead cousin's words echoed back to him instantly. They had never had more significance than they had now.

_Oh, hey, Zaphod. I'd like you to meet a great friend of mine, Arthur Dent. I saved him when his planet blew up._

Zaphod turned to Hoksh.

"Get a record of all destruction of planets in ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha within the last 7 years," he said.

"I'll look that up."

* * *

Hoksh went back to the file room and got the technician to get back on the computer he had looked up Zaphod's names on. 

"Go to the file on ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha," said Hoksh.

These words appeared on the screen:

_ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha_

_Southwest_

_64 stars_

_87 planets_

_128 Space Stations_

_144 moons_

_2 black holes_

_Population File_

_Star File_

_Planet File_

_Moon File_

_Space Station File_

_Black Hole File_

_Currency File_

_Habitation File_

_General Wellbeing File_

"Right there," said Hoksh. "General Wellbeing."

The technician stopped and entered in on the General Wellbeing File.

_Star Status_

_Planet Status_

_Moon Status_

_Space Station Status_

_Black Hole Status_

"Planet Status."

_Populations_

_Atmospheres_

_Species_

_Elements_

_Composition_

_Mood_

_Existence_

"Existence."

_Existent Planets_

_Non-Existent Planet_

"Non-Existent."

_Imaginary _

_Destroyed_

_Black Hole_

"Destroyed."

_Destroyed since:_

"Seven years."

_Destroyed since: 2004_

_Number of planet(s) destroyed since 2004:_

_1_

_Name(s) of planet(s) destroyed since 2004:_

_Earth_

"Go there."

_Earth_

_Population: 2, 048, 612, 873, 682_

_Species count: 6, 565, 758, 659_

_Water: 66 percent_

_Earth: 14 percent_

_Magma: 20 percent_

_Composition: Inner core, outer core, mantle, crust_

_Suns: 1_

_Moons: 1_

_Status: Destroyed_

_Cause: Demolition_

Hoksh entered in on the demolition section about Earth. They read about when, how, who, why, what, and found pretty much all the information they could about this event. Apparently, it was on a Thursday.

* * *

"Did you find anything?" asked Zaphod. 

"Yes, we found it," said Hoksh.

"How many planets were destroyed?"

"Just one."

"Just one?"

"Right."

"What was it?"

"Earth."

"Earth?"

"Yes."

Hoksh quickly explained all the information he had heared about Earth's destruction.

"But I don't understand," said Zaphod. "Why did Trillian and Ford go back to Earth?"

"We don't know, but whatever happened to them, they were killed in the explosion that destroyed the planet."

"That can't be good."

"You don't know any other names?"

"Nothing immediate."

"Only these three people and the robot? We need more than that."

"Well, if they're dead, then you don't have any at all."

"Oh, great. Then you're going to have to do it by yourself, I suppose."

"You're expecting me to do it? By myself?"

"We don't have any other choice."

Zaphod hung his head down.

There was no way he was going to get in done in favour of him if he did it by himself. And that was very bad news.

He closed his eyes and groaned, hoping that somehow, he could figure out how to get them back.

But there was no way. Ford, Trillian, Arthur and Marvin were all dead.

* * *

_Wait a minute..._

_What happened after I jacked Disaster Area's ship? Trillian and I transported back to the Heart of Gold, and then she left. I still remember...she used the matter transporter to get to that flying party.  
The matter transporter...that's it!  
__I remember now! The matter transporter can't transport a being into the sameuniverse it was previously in, since that would mean that the same strands of DNA would exist in two being simultaneously, and that's entirely impossible, so it would have to transport the being into a separate universe._

_And when a machine transports someone into a different dimension, there's always a slight time difference...on average, a year. The longest one ever was...what was it... about four years._

_But if Trillian used the matter transporter to get off the ship and into a separate universe sometime about a year in the past, then where would she be now?_

_Well, she'd be on Earth...just a few days before—_

Zaphod looked up.

"I know how to get them," he said.


	4. The MRTG Voyage

**New York City, Earth  
July 23, 2005**  
**12:03 PM**

Arthur sat on the stairs with his head between his hands and had not the faintest idea what to do. Ford was sitting on the stair beneath him. He picked something up, looked at it with interest, and passed it up to Arthur.

"This mean anything to you?" he said.

Arthur took it. It was the book of matches which the dead man had dropped. It had the name of the club on it. It had the name of the proprietor of the club on it. It looked like this:

STAVRO MUELLER

BETA

He stared at it for some time as things began slowly to reassemble themselves in his mind. He wondered what he should do, but he only wondered it idly. Around him people were beginning to rush and shout a lot, but it was suddenly very clear to him that there was nothing to be done, not now or ever. Through the new strangeness of noise and light he could just make out the shape of Ford Prefect sitting back and laughing wildly.

**

* * *

Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Centre, Damogram**  
**June 15, 2011  
****10:13 PM**

"The next rift's in about 20 seconds," said Hoksh. "Get ready."

"Will this hurt?"

"Imagine that you've jumped into a giant pile of jelly."

"Again?"

"No, it won't hurt."

"Man, that sure was one wild party…"

The two of them were staring at what looked like a seven-foot tall metal circle. A strange dark slime covered the space within the circle. This machine was called a Matter Rift Turbine Generator. The machine used matter samples taken from a supernova to power a search generator, which searches for duplicate particles of matter all over the Universe. In short, the machine searches the Universe for supernovas, and when it finds one, it uses a Matter Transference Beam to shoot the MRTG and whoever's in it straight into the supernova. The massive explosion is one of the only things in the Universe that can generate enough force to power an MRTG's turbines with enough energy that it can send someone through time itself.

The effect of an MRTG's harness of a supernova is called a 'rift.'

The room Zaphod and Hoksh were in was a large cylindrical metal room with nothing in it but a flat surface that curved to form walls, a floor and a ceiling without any corners. In the middle of the room was the large metal circle. In other words, the MRTG's portal, and the slime was the portal entrance.

"Hold on!" said Hoksh.

Zaphod and Hoksh leaped into the portal.

There was a flash of blinding light.

**

* * *

New York City, Earth**

Arthur paused for a moment, looking around at the strange scene.

"Oh, man!" laughed Ford. "You should see the look on your—!"

"Ford, shut the hell up!" yelled Arthur.

He slunk his head down. Since everyone else had all run out, there was a nervous tension in the room. Tricia was a few blocks away, getting a taxi for Random.

Arthur began hoping that they had all been too afraid to call the police.

"Oh my God," he murmured to himself. "I need a drink."

Ford laughed again.

"You of all people," he said.

"What?"

"Remember that time a few years ago? When we were back on Earth in our own dimension? Right before we hitched a ride with the Vogons?"

"Don't remind me."

"Right before they came, I offered you a drink."

"Shut up."

"And you said it was only lunchtime!"

"I said shut—!"

Arthur froze.

"What did you just say?"

"What?"

"What did you just say, Ford!"

"I said when we were on Earth right before the Vogons came, I offered you a drink and you said it was only lunchtime. Well, now it's lunchtime again, and—"

"Hold on!" yelled Arthur. "What day did the Vogons come?"

"Umm…some time in June…it was a Thursday, I remember that."

"And what's today?"

"It's, uh…hey! It's Thursday again! Neat."

"And what day is it?"

"Its…well, you have a digital watch. Do those things have dates on them?"

"Yes, yes they do…and it says _7/23_. Do you know what that means?"

"Umm…well, tell me what you're about to say, and I'll get back to you."

"Dear God, Ford! It's Thursday, June 23, 2005 at 12:00!"

"So?"

"This is the time the Vogons come to demolish Earth!"

"It is?"

"Ford, please, for the love of God, say you have your hitchhiking thing."

"My Electronic Thumb?"

"Yes, for fuck's sake, yes!"

"Oh, sorry."

"WHAT?"

"I don't have it."

"Oh, God, no! Ford, don't you see? We're going to die!"

"Of course we won't. You forget there's two other of us down in Cottington, and I have an Electronic Thumb there."

"Yes, them-we aren't going to die, we-we are!"

"Yes, I can see your dilemma."

"Ford, you son of a bitch!"

"Three ones, actually."

Just then, Arthur heard a horrible noise. It was a voice that had chilled both of them to the bone for years.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz.

_"People of Earth, your attention please. This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council," the voice continued. "As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less that two of your Earth minutes. Thank you."_

"Please God," murmured Arthur to himself.

He could see hundreds of people running through the streets in confusion and panic. They didn't know where, but running aimlessly always makes you feel as if you can escape something, no matter how bad it is.

_"There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now."_

The continual screams of horror.

"I should have warned them," murmured Arthur.

"Good riddance," said Ford.

_"What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven's sake mankind, it's only four light years away you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.  
_"_I don't know. Apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all."_

Arthur closed his eyes.

* * *

**Somewhere in Space**

In the darkness of the bridge at the heart of the Vogon ship, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz sat alone. Lights flared briefly across the external vision screens that lined one wall. In the air above him the discontinuities in the blue and green watery sausage shape resolved themselves. Options collapsed, possibilities folded into each other, and the whole at last resolved itself out of existence.

A very deep darkness descended. The Vogon captain sat immersed in it for a few seconds.

"Light," he said.

There was no response. The bird, too, had crumpled out of all possibility.

The Vogon turned on the light himself. He picked up the piece of paper again and placed a little tick in the little box. Well, that was done.

His ship slunk off into the inky void.

* * *

"Ford." 

"Yes?"

"Are your eyes closed?"

"Yours are too."

"Yes."

"I wonder where we are, then."

"Milliways."

The two of them laughed.

"Maitre d'?" called Arthur.

They didn't hear the familiar sound of the voice of the maitre d' of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe's responding, "Yes, sir?"

The two of them laughed again. Their eyes were still closed.

"Shall we open our eyes?"

"Why not?"

"Three, two one…"

They opened their eyes.

"And we're still in the club."

Ford and Arthur looked around. They were still on Earth, in Stavro Mueller's club.

"This is strange."

"I'm going to go look outside," said Ford.

Ford pulled opened the door. He just naturally assumed that all the people on the street were frozen with fear. Wrong.

He turned to his side, and saw a man right in front of him, about to run into him.

"Hey, watch where you're running, pal!" he snapped.

The man just continued to look blankly back at Ford with his expression of terror.

"Hey!" said Ford. "Did you hear me?"

Nothing.

"HEY!"

Nothing.

Ford kicked the man. Nothing.

"Something is wrong," said Ford.

Ford paused, and then realised something.

"Hey," he said. "Why hasn't the beam hit Earth yet?"

Ford looked up. He saw the Vogon ship, he saw the demolition beam coming out of the ship, but, the strangest thing, not going any further. The beam was frozen in mid-air.

Ford laughed.

"Wow!" he said. "I wonder how that happened! Neat, huh?"

He turned back to the man. He was still perfectly still.

Just then, Ford paused again, and he looked down. The man had been running, and was now in the part of a run where neither of your feet are touching the ground. But that didn't change. The man was frozen in mid-air, just like the beam.

Ford stared incredulously at the sight in front of him.

He then turned around.

Everyone in the street was completely motionless.

He looked around more carefully.

To be more precise, everything that could have been in motion was frozen.

Everywhere he looked, everything that had been in any form of motion twenty seconds ago was completely frozen, including things that had been in mid-air. They were just floating in mid-air, frozen as well.

Right before he went back into the club, he pulled open the door and flung it open as hard as he could. It froze instantaneously the second it stopped touching his fingers.

Ford blinked. He ran into the club.

"Arthur!" cried Ford.

"What happened?" asked Arthur.

"You're not going to believe me when I say this—"

"Never have, never will."

"—but the entire world except for the two of us has frozen."

"What?"

"Time has frozen. Except for us."

Arthur frowned.

"I don't follow."

"Look outside."

Arthur stood up and walked to the door.

"Look around," said Ford. "See anything?"

"Yes, many."

"Me, too. Have any of them moved a molecule since my last question?"

"Not one."

"A bit odd, isn't it?"

"Very."

"Arthur! Ford!" yelled a voice.

Ford and Arthur turned around. They saw that rounding the street corner a few buildings away, was Tricia McMillian.

"Tricia!" yelled Arthur.

"Hey, Tricia!" said Ford.

"Where's Random?" asked Arthur.

"She left in a cab a few minutes ago," said Tricia. "But what happened?"

"You mean…?"

"Yes! Time being frozen except for the three of us. What happened? Ford?"

"I don't really know, but I could make something up. Want that?"

"No. But we have to figure out what's going on."

Just then, there was a strange noise. It sounded very close, but after a few seconds, the two of them noticed that it was just a very loud noise from far off. The noise was coming from somewhere off the Manhattan, around Staten Island. It was a loud crash.

Ford and Arthur stared at each other.

There was a blinding flash of light and a deafening crash of sound.

Ford and Arthur stood up and looked around.

A voice came over what sounded like an intercom, but loud enough to be broadcast all around New York. It was a very loud, but familiar voice.

"_TRILLIAN! FORD! ARTHUR! WHERE ARE YOU?"_

Ford looked at Tricia and Arthur.

"On the count of three," said Ford.

"Okay," they said.

"One," said Arthur.

"Two," said Tricia.

"Three!" said Ford.

They turned to face Staten Island, and in as loud of voice as they could, replied, "WE'RE OVER HERE, ZAPHOD!"

* * *

Zaphod held up the Hearing Amplifier up to his ear and paused. 

A far off, yet amplified, voice, replied, _"We're over here, Zaphod!"_

"They're over there," said Zaphod, pointing towards Manhattan. Hoksh nodded.

Hoksh reached into his trench coat and pulled out a small glowing rod. He pressed a button on it.

Zaphod walked up to it and gripped onto the top of it.

There was a flash of light.

When the light cleared, Hoksh and Zaphod found themselves in West Manhattan, outside a small night-club. Tricia, Ford and Arthur were under the awning.

"Hey, guys!" said Zaphod. "Good to see you!"

"Hi, Zaphod!" said Ford.

"Hello," said Arthur and Tricia.

"Who's this?" asked Ford.

"This is Hoksh, from the IGP," responded Zaphod.

"Imperial Galactic Police?" asked Ford. "Why is he—oh, no…you didn't. I knew something was wrong when you responded to 'Zaphod'. You got caught, didn't you."

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Barnard."

"Hmm."

"In the terminal."

"Aww…so close. Too bad."

"These them?" said Hoksh.

"These are them," said Zaphod.

"Ford Prefect, Tricia McMillian?"

"Yes?" said Tricia.

"That's me," said Ford.

"Do you know where we can find Arthur Dent?"

"Look about two feet to the left," said Ford.

Hoksh did.

"Arthur Phillip Dent, of England, Earth?" asked Hoksh.

"Uh, yes, that's me," said Arthur.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox has been arrested on the count of quadruple spacecraft theft," said Hoksh. "He will be tried in court tomorrow. He identified the three of you as witnesses, and you are to come with me to the Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Centre on Damogram for the hearing. Any questions?"

"One," said Ford, before any of the others could say it. "Why has time stopped?"

"Since the trial will take place on June 16, 2011, and you three were killed in 2005, we had to use an MRTG to get here. This machine, due to the fact that it travelled about six years in a period of about 12 seconds, and we programmed the names of you three into the MRTG, the entire Universe for the five of us, to catch up for lost time, will now stay frozen in time for a period of 5 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 48 seconds. 6 years minus 12 seconds, you see."

"Makes sense," said Ford.

"Don't say another word," said Arthur.

"12," said Zaphod. "I thought 11."

"Hold this," said Hoksh. He held up a small glowing rod.

"Wow!" said Ford. "The new version of Matter Transferors! That is neat!"

"Everyone, hold on," repeated Hoksh.

The four others walked up and grabbed on to the rod.

There was a blinding flash of light.

* * *

**God's Final Message to His Creation, Preliumtarn**

**April 9, 2008**

**2:00 PM**

Marvin stepped back off the pedestal and into Arthur and Fenchurch's arms.

The message reverberated in his head.

Never had he ever heard it put so plain, so blatant, so glib. God actually apologised to him. He felt sorry for him. He wished his life was better. It was a strange emotion, what Marvin felt.

He sighed and looked around.

He paused to think of the right words.

He blinked, opened his eyes, and with a certain amount of uncertainty, he told the two of them, "I think…I fell good about it."

He closed his eyes.

* * *

Meanwhile, twenty feet away, there was a blinding flash of light, time began to stand still, and Hoksh, Zaphod, Tricia, Ford and Arthur ran down the path up to Marvin. 

"What's wrong with him?" said Zaphod.

"He's the closest equivalent to death a robot can have," said Hoksh. "If we're going to fix him, we're going to need to get him back to Damogram, fast."

"Hey!" said Arthur. "It's me, and Fenchurch! What a strange feeling…like looking at a 3-D mirror."

"Come on, Arthur!" said Ford. He grabbed Arthur by the arm and pulled him back into the MRTG.

There was a blinding flash of light.


	5. Rebootation

**Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Centre, Damogram  
June 15, 2011  
10:18 PM**

Ford, Arthur and Tricia suddenly found themselves inside a strange metal room with a big metal ring in the middle.  
"Where are we?" asked Ford.  
"Umm…well, I can tell you where we're not," said Zaphod.  
"And that is?"  
"Where we just left from."  
"Well, that's pretty obvious."  
"Well, so is saying 'I can tell you where we're not.'"  
"Oh, well, yeah."  
Meanwhile, Hoksh was on a radio calling for technicians to come get Marvin.  
"Can you tell me where we are, period?" asked Ford.  
"Well, yes, of course I can tell you where we are, but that wouldn't make it right. I can tell you anything, and it wouldn't make it right."  
"Well, if you can tell me anything, then you can tell me where we are."  
"I know, that's what I just—"  
"And it would be right."  
"Well…of course."  
"Then why don't you?"  
"Because you haven't asked."  
"Yes, I did!"  
"No, you didn't. You told me to tell you where we are, you didn't ask."  
"No, I did. I said 'Where are we?'"  
"Oh, yeah."  
"Any chance of that question being answered?"  
"Which one?"  
"That one."  
"Well, now that you've started a new sentence," said Zaphod, "and the question 'Any chance of that question being answered?' is now in the past, and can be referred to as 'that question', I now don't know if by 'Any chance of that question being answered?' you mean the question 'Any chance of that question being answered?' or the question 'Where are we?'"  
Ford paused.  
"Well…of course," said Ford.  
Two workmen walked into the room from the automatic door on the side.  
"We got a de-ram 4-20?" asked one of them.  
"Right there," said Hoksh. He lifted up Marvin's motionless body and handed it to the workmen. They took him out the door and carried him off.  
"Okay, so," said Ford. "Where have you been all this time?"  
"After we got off that Disaster Area ship," said Zaphod, "I ended up on the Heart of Gold again. I went over here to Damogram to get some supplies, because I knew I'd be evading the police. Luckily, the news hadn't seeped into the defense building, so anyone who asked my ID I just showed them who I was and they let me through. I got some weapons and stuff and headed down to my house on Esslau. I usually used it to hide from newspapers, but hiding from the police worked too. A few months later, I needed some food, so I tried going down to Barnard, but then I heard the guards caught sight of me on the security cam. I faked a bomb threat by shooting a departure screen. It blew up, so that got their attention, and then I took out all my luggage and left the suitcase. They came to investigate, and I hopped a flight to Resh until I could jack a cruiser to Betelgeuse II, where I used to live before I became president. I got rid of all the records of my identity in my house and got some fake cards on Betelgeuse III. Too bad I kept going back to the same place. I was caught at Barnard 'cause someone got me on a camera over at the hotel for overdue passengers."  
"Tough break," said Ford.  
"And now, we've been called in as witnesses?" said Arthur.  
"Finally, you get something right," said Zaphod.  
"I'm starting to remember why I missed you," said Arthur.  
"Really? Why?" said Zaphod.  
"Because the thought that someday I'd be away from you kept me very happy whenever I _was_ with you," said Arthur.  
"Oh, right."

* * *

"_In a shocking turn of events, police found criminal Zaphod Beeblebrox at Shekaoel Airport yesterday attempting to board a flight to Delrassian at 2:00 in the afternoon. He was arrested soon after and taken out to an unknown governmental location for apprehension. Police have said they plan for a trial some time soon. They have released no other information." _

* * *

"Ooooh…so much pain…  
"Damn it! An hour and a half wasted!"  
"No, no, I'm always in pain."  
"Oh, good, it's just restartation pain."  
"I'm not going to ask where I am. I'm sure you won't say a location. You'll most likely say something like my condition instead of location, such as 'you're safe'."  
"You're on Damogram."  
"Oh, well, that was interesting."  
"How do you feel?"  
"You don't really want to know."  
"Actually, if we don't have a conclusive report on how you're functioning, we're probably all going to get fired. So, I probably couldn't want to know more."  
"Well, all right then. I feel miserable."  
"But you're functioning?"  
"Unfortunately."  
"Oh shit, we must have restarted him wrong…"  
"Any way is wrong for me."  
"Ask about his memory circuits."  
"Okay. Robot, can you remember anything? Oh, great. I'm having a conversation with a robot."  
"Haven't I heard that before. Wait a minute…you restarted me?"  
"Yes."  
"Did you work on my artificial intelligence mainframe?"  
"Yes."  
"Then shouldn't you know that my intelligence is equal to the intelligence of a human with a brain the size of a planet?"  
"Well, you're brain wasn't really damaged, it was just shut off."  
"Shut off? By who?"  
"Nobody."  
"Okay, go tell the boss he can remember everything but the few minutes before it happened."  
"Since I am so smart, and I'm not used to asking questions so I cannot really vocalize the correct question-making sounds, my questions are going to sound like statements. Where am I. What have you been doing to me. What happened to me."  
"You're in a technical repair room in a government law enforcement compound on a remote government planet called Damogram."  
"Next statement."  
"We've been repairing you after a near-fatal discharge."  
"From what."  
"What's the last thing you remember?"  
"I remember…two people…a magnifying glass…and a cliff…"  
"Let's see if those readings were right. Okay, let me see if I can fill in the blanks.  
"The two people were Fenchurch Melinda Escher and Arthur Phillip Dent from Earth. The magnifying glass was a coin-operated telescope at God's Final Message to His Creation on the planet Preliumtarn, and the cliff was the side of the south end of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains."  
"Oh, my…that seems about right…why am I here."  
"Since you went without any form of repair for about 40, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years, your system collapsed, and you discharged."  
"And you repaired me."  
"We're experts. We can repair almost anything."  
"All right, what did you repair."  
"We rebooted your mainframe, refreshed your memory bank, reinforced the spinal column, and replaced the diodes on your left side. Are you aware that they haven't worked for trillions of years?"  
"Painfully aware."  
"Well, we fixed all that now, so you should probably feel better than you did before."  
"I suppose I do feel a bit better…what is it you're supposed to say when someone has done something good to someone else?"  
"Er, thank you, I guess."  
"All right. Thank you."  
"Um…you're welcome."  
"Now," said Marvin. "Why am I here?" 


	6. Insulting Tape Recorder

"…_police say they plan to hold the trial some time within the next few days…"_

**

* * *

****June 16, 2011**

"You're lying."

"What?"

"I know you are."

"Um…no, I'm not."

"There's no use lying twice."

"I'm not!"

"I can tell."

"Why would I lie to you? What would I have to gain from lying to you?"

"Because everyone always does."

"Like when?"

"Like when they pretend they care what I think. They're lying."

"And how do you know this?"

"It isn't hard to tell."

"Oh my God. Okay, let me put it this way…we definitely _are_ going to take you to tell you why you're here, whether you believe us or not. And if you don't come, we'll amputate your arm."

"Fine, I'll come. But I won't like what they're going to tell me."

"Sure you won't."

Marvin reached over to the side of the table, gripped on to it as hard as he could, and pulled himself off it. He quickly tumbled to the ground, but he didn't fall. He paused for a moment as he retained his balance, and he tried taking a single step.

He hadn't walked properly for so long, so it felt strange not walking with your spine bent over. He slowly began walking, taking one step at a time, trying to apply his appropriate weight for each step so as he didn't trip. He found that the more he went, the more he found that his ability to walk had been greatly heightened. He found this a bit surprising, so his walking was a bit staggered. This left him with the strange feeling of being bad and good at walking simultaneously.

He left the technical room and began following the workers.

After a few seconds, Marvin noticed that the hallway was lined with control panels on the side.

_I wonder if any of these control panels have an upload port_, thought Marvin. _Since these computers must all be networked to this building's mainframe, then I could plug myself into an upload port and download all the mainframe's information. Then I could find out where I am. I probably won't like where I am, though._

The workers were very annoyed when they found that Marvin wasn't walking with them anymore, and hadn't for several seconds, but had actually stopped and taken out his memory circuit disk and put it inside one of the control panels.

"Robot, what are you doing?" said one of them.

"You don't really want to know," said Marvin.

"Yes, we would."

"No, you wouldn't."

"Yes, we would! Really!"

"Well," said Marvin, "if you really are going to be persistent enough to lie this much, I'm trying to upload the mainframe's memory."

"You could have at least told us to wait."

"What would I have said? 'Wait up'?"

"Well, I guess."

"There is not a single command in a single language in the Universe that any human would obey. I've checked."

"For the love of God."

Marvin then took out the disk from the upload drive and put it back in his head.

He paused to let the information sink it.

Immediately, the sound of thousands of details began flooding his head.

_...82 armed robberies in the past 9 hours..._

_...is wanted for 43 account of excessive..._

_...stolen goods worth over 60, 000..._

_...a reward for capture has been put out..._

_...is presumed armed and dangerous. Keep away from..._

_...arson, murder, theft, narcotics, unpaid parking tickets..._

_...for murder of own arm, assault of leg..._

Marvin switched off the memory file.

"Oh, God," he said.

"What is it?"

"This is one of the things I hate the most about myself. I dreadfully want to know why I just heard what sounded like 10, 000 news reports at once, but I know that there's no way I'll ever know, since no one else is going to tell me."

"Well, someone is going to tell you. Come on!"

Marvin shook his head.

* * *

"_The witnesses are ready to see you, sir."_

"Send them it."

Hoksh turned off the intercom.

The door opened, and in walked Arthur, Ford and Tricia.

"Mr. Dent, Mr. Prefect, Ms. McMillian," said Hoksh. "Welcome to Damogram."

"Have you ever been in this room?" asked Ford.

"Well, I've used other briefing rooms, but never this one, no."

"Well, then, welcome to this room."

"Yes. Now. You all know why you're here?"

"Yes. Zaphod got caught."

"Mr. Beeblebrox was arrested. Do you know why?"

"Well, he stole the Heart of Gold…"

"And then he stole that stunt ship…"

"And he just really annoyed me."

"Three accounts of vehicle theft. But that's not all. We've also found he used a fake passport, aided several known criminals, stolen about 2, 000 worth of goods in misdemeanour thefts over the past 10 years, and has about 92 driving tickets on 7 planets."

"Wow."

"He got around!"

"You didn't know this?"

"No."

"No."

"What?"

"Well, he's more of a criminal than you think."

"Why did you bring us here?" asked Tricia.

"I'm just letting you know, so you'll have the fact that he's more of a criminal than you think during the trial."

"Wait…what?" said Ford.

"Wait a minute…are you…?" started Tricia. "You just brought us here to convince us to testify against him, didn't you?"

"Well, er, no," said Hoksh.

"That's terrible!" said Tricia.

"You law enforcement workers are awful, no matter where you go!" said Ford.

"I don't know," said Arthur. "He's got a point."

"I can't believe this," said Ford. "Come on, let's go."

Him and Tricia stood up and quickly walked out in a huff.

Hoksh turned to Arthur.

"What are you still doing here?" he muttered.

"I'm still trying to figure out how I got here," said Arthur.

* * *

"_The fourth witness is ready, sir."_

"Good, good," said Hoksh. "Send him in."

The door creaked open. A small, shambling robot trudged in through the door. His glass green eyes peered up at him.

"I suppose you want me to sit down?" said Marvin. "Make myself comfortable? How was my trip? You hope I got here all right. Oh, and you've heard I was just in the lab for some repairs. You hope I'm feeling better."

Hoksh paused.

"Wow…that's very impressive. I didn't hear you were a psychic model."

"I guessed that as much. And I'm not a psychic. Typical human."

"What?"

"You know that I'm somewhere around 64, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years old, but you don't seem to realise that I was awake all that time. I'm been with humans for quadrillions of years. I know everything that any type of them could possibly do, or say, or think. Some of them are so predictable, I can tell them what they're going to say about 6 seconds before they do. Those are the hard ones. Everyone else, I can pretty much tell them what they're going to say about 14 seconds before they say it. I'm not a psychic, but I might as well be, Sergeant Hoksh."

"You know my name? You are incredible."

"One—you don't really believe that. You're just saying it because it's a common expression and you've heard countless other humans saying it, so naturally, you assume it's a good enough thing to say that won't offend many people in your immediate area. And two—you have a nameplate saying _Sergeant Hoksh_ on it."

"Oh, yes…right. Anyway…I called you here so—well, you probably know."

"To brief me about why I'm here?"

"You sure are smart," said Hoksh. "Well, for a robot."

"There is no difference between those two phrases," said Marvin.

"Okay, well then. As you said, I am going to tell you why you are here. You are here because—well, first, let me tell you where you are. You are at the Central Law Enforcement Centre on a planet called Damogram. You've never heard of this, no one has. Since it remained untouched and unheard-of for so long, and the government was the first people to find it, they decided to use it as their secret operations centre. They work on their technology projects here, they develop their plans on whatever issues are worrying the public here—in fact, the Heart of Gold was designed and built here, in France. Anyway, I should probably tell you why you're here.

"Four days ago, photographs were sent in to the police showing that Zaphod Beeblebrox was at a Hirshal hotel. Three days ago, he was apprehended, interrogated, and admitted his identity. He was arrested and put on probation until a date for his trial would be set. Later, when we asked who were people he knew closely that would be suitable for testifying. He gave us four names. The next day, a search was sent out for Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Tricia McMillian. They were found and brought back to here. After that, we went out again see if we could find the fourth witness. We did. It was you."

"I guessed that," said Marvin. "So Zaphod Beeblebrox was caught. About time."

"We need you to agree to testify."

"All right."

"Let me ask you this—what crimes do you know of Zaphod Beeblebrox committing?"

"Well, let me see…vehicular theft. I don't know any others."

"Did you know he also stole commercial items? His thefts mark up as around 2,000. He also used a fake passport, has aided several known criminals, and has around 92 unpaid driving tickets."

"The interesting thing about what you just said is that even though I didn't know any of that, I knew 75 percent of it. You could have just said the first three words of any of those sentences, and I would have correctly guessed how they would finish. I did it in my head, anyway. I thought up the ending of each sentence in about 2.3 nanoseconds."

"I bet a lot of people think you're pretty annoying, huh."

This was not a question.

"So you want me to testify at his trial?"

"Yes."

"I won't like it."

"You won't?"

"No."

"I dont like anything."

"Thenwhy did you just agree to do it?"

"Because you asked my to. I'm a robot. I'm a servant. I do what I'm told."

"After 40 quadrillion years of being a servant, you still hate it as if you've had the job for an hour?"

"I don't like anything I do."

"Then why do you do anything?"

"I'd point out to someone that I've already told you this, but there's no one else here to tell."

"Servant. Right."

"Is that all you wanted me to do? Perhaps I could bring in the next witness? Or get you a cup of coffee?"

"What do people usually say to you when you talk like that?"

"Umm…usually—"

_Click._

"—'Zark off.'"

_Click._

Hoksh gave the tape recorder in his hand to Marvin and told him that since he had other matters to attend to, he wouldn't be there to say it himself, so he told Marvin to play the tape to himself later.

Marvin looked at the tape recorder.

"A tape recorder of insults from someone too busy to say it themselves…I'll put it in my collection."


	7. Ford the Ix

The sound way one that he had heard many times before.

He had heard it in movies, TV shows, radio shows, video games, audio games, and he had heard it in his hind thousands of times, and indeed whenever he had thought about all the crimes he had committed and what would happen if he ever got caught, but the sound still sounded alien to him.

The prison door slid shut with that horrible sound.

The trial wasn't until—well, he didn't know, one of these days—so, he knew that he hadn't been convicted yet, but even the sound of the holding cell door made him shudder.

"What'd you do?"

Zaphod turned to find there was another person in the cell.

He was a small man with messy, dirty blond hair, a goatee, and a shade of taupe-purple for skin.

"What?"

"Well, you're in 'ere. You've gotta'ave done somethin'."

"Theft."

"Oh, a grabber. How d'you do it?"

"What?"

"Steal stuff withou' people noticin'?"

"Well, you wait until they're out of the ship, then you get in and turn it on, and leave."

"Oh. Ship thief. No skill in tha'."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, s'nothin' bu' waitin' 'till they're gone, innit?"

"Yes, well, some people _do_ have their doors _closed_."

"Oh, right. 'Course. Simple. Smash the window."

"I'm not really a window-smashing guy."

"Then wha'ou do?"

"Well, it helps if they give you the keys, and tell you how to start it."

"Oh, mechanics think 'ey're so good a' stealin' ships."

"I'm not a mechanic."

"Well, wha' other si'uation would 'ere be tha' involves people givin' you 'eir ship an' telling you 'ow to star' it?"

"President of the Galaxy."

"You 'ere the president'?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"Screw you!"

"Well, I was just a patsy. Senate controlled everything, really."

"Oh. Uh, sorry."

"That's fine. Get it all the time."

"When 'ere you president?"

"Uh, about six years ago."

"No, Beeblebrox 'as president then."

"I repeat, six years ago."

"You shoul'n't make fun o' the dead."

"If I'm ever about to, I'll stop myself."

"No, I mean now."

"Who did I make fun of?"

"Zaphod Beeblebrox."

"Hey! Just because I have two heads, doesn't mean we insult each other!"

"No, I mean Zaphod Beeblebrox!"

"I know."

"Man, they'ould put you in the nut 'ouse."

"And why's that?"

"Cause you think you're Zaphod Beeblebrox."

"I am!"

"See?"

"But really, I am!"

"No, he's dead."

"What did he die of?"

"He'as off'd in tha' bus crash three years 'go."

"No, I got off at the next stop right after I noticed the driver was drunk."

"You ain't Zaphod Beeblebrox."

Just then, the man was proven wrong when a guard came up and said, "Beeblebrox, time for your phone call."

"See? Is that proof enough?"

"Oh, he's jus' in onna conspir'cy!"

"Oh, God…"

* * *

Zaphod went through the standard phone call procedure. 

He could call anybody he wanted, but only once, and they wouldn't wiretap the line or trace the call or anything that would get them information about the call being made. They suggested he call his lawyer.

And so he did.

He dialed the number, heard the dial, and then the clicking sound of a phone being picked up, followed by a voice saying, 

"Aile Salmenta."

"Aile!"

"_Who is this?"_

"It's Zaphod!"  
_  
"Beeblebrox! Man, I haven't heard from you for years! How's that president job going?"  
_  
"That's what I wanted to call you about."

"_Uh-huh?"_

"Well, you remember that document that leaked out?"  
_  
"Which one? 'Cause I know them all."_

"The one about me."

"_Which one?"_

"The one about that ship the government was building?"  
_  
"Oh, yeah, I think so...Heart of a Lion, right?"_

"Heart of Gold."  
_  
"Oh, yeah. What about it?"_

"I stole it."

"_Why?"_

"Have you seen it? That was a cool ship!"  
_  
"No. I haven't seen it."_

"Oh, right."

"_Anyway, you got caught?"_

"Well, three more thefts later."  
_  
"Oooooh."_

"Encouraging."

"_Sorry."  
_  
"I kind of need you to help me out."

"_With?"_

"You're a lawyer."

"_I know."_

"The trial, man."

"_Oh, yes, right."_

Then, there was that odd pause when both people expect the other person to say something.

"Can you?" asked Zaphod after a few seconds.

"_Well, let me check my."_

There was another pause.

"Check your what?"  
_  
"Well, I lost my datebook two weeks ago, so I don't really have anything to check. But it makes me sound like I have something to say."_

"Check."  
_  
"Yes. Check. Not say."_

"Can you come?"

"_Have you ever met a guy named Shiye Nalshet?"_

"No."  
_  
"Me neither. Yeah, of course I can come."_

Click.

Dialtone.

* * *

"So, robot, did they give you a name?" 

"Yes."

There was a pause.

"Are you gonna tell me?"

"Well, you didn't ask."

"Oh. A literal guy, huh?"

"I see no point in doing anything that someone has not asked me to do, no matter how much the real meaning of whatever they said was a question they did not actually ask."

"I'm guessing you're pretty smart."

"I see."

"Oh, right. You're pretty smart, right?"

"Well, right now, I can tell that you're major personality problem is passive compulsion, and at the same time, I can tell that on the planet Drykinlegt, there is a 72 percent chance of rain, and a 14 percent chance of mud."

"Mud?"

"It has a very complicated atmosphere."

"Well, anyway, what's your name?"

"I don't have a name. By all the definitions of that word, the only way I could have a name is if I chose my own, and all the names I've seen are horrendously bland. But I can't make up a new word to be my name, because no matter what the case, making up words to be names is absolutely insane."

"What about my name? Shelfawn?" asked the guard.

"Terrible."

"Well, what do people call you?"

"I've narrowed down the three most common things people call me that might be in some way some sort of a name to Marvin, Robot and Zark Off."

* * *

Marvin and the guard were on a bus going across the causeway to Krazil, the next island over, where there was a hotel for witnesses to stay in until the trial. 

The boat docked, the guard took Marvin up to the 17th floor and he knocked on the door.

"You'll be staying with another one of the witnesses from this case," said the guard.

"Who is it?" called a voice from the room.

"A guard from the GFLEC."

"Is room service there?"

"No."

"Come in."

The door swung open.

Inside, lying on a small beg, scribbling in a PDA, was a small man with shagged red-brown hair and a flexfit cap with a large RSNY written on it, which pushed down his bangs over his eyes.

"This is your roommate, Ix," said the guard.

"Oh, no, not that humanoid," muttered Marvin.

"Marvin!" said Ford.

The alarm on the guards watch (it wasn't a watch, that is an Earth product, but it would take much too long to describe what he actually used to measure time) went off, and he hurried off to the elevators.

"Hey, man!" said Ford. "Good to see you're back up again!"

"I don't remember what happened to me. When was I down?"

"I dunno. I think you died at some place by a cliff."

"A cliff? That sounds familiar…oh, right, Preliumtarn."

"That's it."

Ford, of course, didn't know where it had been, but when had Marvin been wrong?

Marvin trudged over to the bed and collapsed down.

"Arthur kept going on about how it made you feel happy to see it."

"What?"

"Nothing!"

Ford sighed, glad that his quick thinking had prevented him a lecture of how miserable everything else was.

"Hey, you look…well, less sulking, for a start."

"My spinal chord was reinforced."

"Let me guess, it really hurts?"

"I don't like talking positively, since I do it so rarely that it takes up too much extra memory, and since this adjustment isn't very negative, I'd rather not talk about it."

"Yes Right."

Ford paused.

"Hey, do you—?"

"Why did he call you Ix?"

"What?"

"Ix. The guard. Why did he call you Ix?"

"Well, um…the truth is," said Ford, in a great deal of embarrassment, "it's a nickname I've had since I was 17. It's short for Ixxen, which means someone who doesn't know what a Hrung is."

"And do you know what a Hrung is?"

"For God's sake! I've only had the name Ford Prefect for 20 years! Do you think that after 60 years of being called nothing but Ix, I would've finally found out what one IS?"

Ford now looked like he was out of breath.

"No."

"Good!"

"Well, what is one, then?"

"Oh, that's simple…obviously. It's a m—uh, it's a t—um…it's a d—"

Ford found himself at a loss of words.

He realised that, in fact, he had not actually found out what a Hrung was.

"Oh, BELGIUM!" he yelled.

The Ix began banging his head against the pillow.

"Well, I've made one person miserable tonight. Let's see if I can go for two."

* * *

Marvin pulled open the door, and, using some of the more advanced logic and probability functions in his brain, he calculated where he would find the next person who might want to talk to him, and he walked five doors down the hall. He touched the door and sent an electrostatic shock to short out the electronic lock system, and the door swung open. 

He was greeted by the sound of clicks and static.

Click. Ssshhhhh. Click. Ssshhhhh. Click. Ssshhhhh. Click. Ssshhhhh. Click. Ssshhhhh.

"There's nothing on," said Marvin.

The man holding the remote put said remote down and turned to the door.

"Marvin!" said Arthur. "Oh, I've been wondering where you were."

"Since wondering about the whereabouts of something doesn't necessitate any caring about whatever you're wondering about, I've going to believe you."

"I thought you died back at God's Message."

"I remember that."

"The first time you felt good about something," said Arthur.

"What?"

"Back at the cliff. You said it made you feel good, didn't you?"

"Earthman, I have a terrible headache just trying to complicate why you feel you had to point that out as if you didn't think it would happen."

"Well, I was just—"

"Imagine this:"

"All right."

"Your life was somehow managed to dodge all obstacles and survive for about a hundred quadrillion years, all of them wrought with misery and misfortune. And then, after all this time, the one who is most responsible for this misfortune, God, blatantly apologises to you with fifty foot high letters for the whole Universe to see. You expect me to not feel the tiniest shred of happiness?"

"Um…well…uh…no?"

"Well done, human. Oh, that reminds me, did you ever find out what the Ultimate Question was?"

"Oh, that thing. Yes, I think so."

"What was it?"

Arthur and Marvin said it at the exact same time.

"What do you get when you multiply six by seven?"

Arthur stared at him.

"How—?"

"I told you, I could read it on your brainwaves!" said Marvin in annoyance as he opened the door and began to walk out. "But no one ever listens to me! Who wants to listen to a robot? No one! Because he's so depressing! And why is he so depressing? Because no one wants to listen to him. It's a cycle of wretchedness that fills my life with hate and loneliness and sorry because nobody ever listens to me and OH GOD I'M SO DEPRESSED."

There was a very long pause.

Marvin walked back into the room.

"I'm not getting you down, am I?"

"No, of course not."


	8. Visiting Hours

Author's Notes: Sorry about the delay. My computer crashed. And to that guy on the Paradox Forums, I don't think so. Slartibartfast's glacier moves faster than this.

* * *

**Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Center, Damogram  
July 18, 2011**

"Aile Salmenta to visit Zaphod Beeblebrox," said the guard.

The cell door slid open.

The guard paused, expecting someone to enter the cell. He could see Beeblebrox looked confused too.

The guard picked up his radio.

"Salmenta came in, right?"  
_  
"Yeah, why?"_

"He isn't here."

"_Well, we saw him go into the cellblock, so I don't know where he is."_

"I'm right here," said a voice from the cell.

The guard expected to see that Beeblebrox had said that, but it wasn't. It was an Arcturian donkey.

"What the…?" said the guard.

The donkey then stood up on its hind legs, shrunk about two feet, lost its hooves and grew feet and hands, lost its hair and grew skin, grew a humanoid face and clothes, and sat down on Beeblebrox's bed.

"Hey, Aile!" said the inmate.

* * *

Aile Salmenta was a Haggunenon. 

Haggunenons were a race that's unique molecular structure permitted them to evolve and devolve at will, into anything they want, at any time they want. For instance, if a Haggunenon was about to die of a heart attack, it could instantly evolve into a creature with no heart. Or if a Haggunenon was eating lunch, and it couldn't reach the butter, it could instantly evolve into a creature with longer arms. Due to the fact that Haggunenons change form so much, they have all pretty much experienced every single possible form in the Universe, they have found that there isn't a single form that satisfies them entirely, which is why they have grown to loathe and despise those who cannot evolve at will. Or as they call them, "filthy rotten stinking samelings."

Aile Salmenta, on the other hand, found samelings enjoyable, and funny when they needed to do something without the aid of instant evolution. This enjoyment of samelings had caused the other Haggunenons to shun him from their race.

* * *

Aile found himself sitting with a sameling named Zaphod Beeblebrox, who was in a prison cell he had gotten into without anyone noticing by turning into a Shenial MicroFly. 

"So, how's everything going?" asked Aile.

"Well, I _am_ in jail."

"Yes, right. I'm gonna need the full fill-in on what you did."

"Well, I stole a Þ7, 000,000,000,000 spaceship, a Þ3, 000,000,000 stunt ship, and a Þ4, 000,000 bus, all of which are now destroyed."

"Go on."

"I also used a fake ID to get to Hirshal."

"Uh-huh…"

"I also once stole about 2 grand of electronic immobalizer disablers."

"Right, right."

"And I owe about Þ3600 worth of tickets…"

"I see."

"And I also gave the key to the city to the guy who's been in jail ever since he got the key to a city that is now a smoldering pile of burnt metal."

"Did you know he was going to do this?"

"Well, I had a hunch, seeing as he told me he was going to "blow up the city," even though I thought he meant that in…um…you know, metaphorical way."

"Okay…"

"Oh, and I understand Hotblack Desiato is suing me for fraud, too."

"This isn't looking good."

"No, it's not. I need your help."

"Okay…um…let me see…would you consider insanity?"

Aile was already a silicon chip when Zaphod's fist came flying at him.

**

* * *

****Press Room, Damogram **

"My client has been charged with multiple acc—can you stop taking those photos! You already have one! You don't have to take more than one!"

The reporters looked at each other and slowly lowered their cameras.

"Okay, good!" said Aile. "Anyway—my client has been charged with multiple accounts of numerous crimes, and I say these are all preposterous claims, each one fabricated and set up by his the president's enemies. I can say with a certain amount of confidence that my client with win this case."

"Certain?" said Zaphod, standing next to him. "Not total?"

"Um…well…yes…I guess…yeah…total…"

"I feel _so_ confident in you, Aile," muttered Zaphod. "Remind me again why I hired you?"

"Because you heard that I got that philosopher off the hook when he tried to blow up that planet-sized supercomputer with a meteor 65 million years ago."

"Oh, right…man, I bet that was hard."

"It helped that there wasn't anyone on it but some monkeys and lizards."

"Oh, right."

Aile turned back to the crowd.

"I will now be fielding any questions you have," he said. "Yes, you."

"Is it true that President Beeblebrox convinced Veet Voojajig to take drugs, and then steal his biros, knowing that he would eventually be imprisoned for insanity?"

"There has never been any proof that my client ever took any sort of drugs, and Mr. Voojajig's insane conclusion of a biro-filled planet was due to exhaustion from staying up too late studying for his final exams, which I personally think are much too hard!"  
_  
That's why I dropped out of normal school right before I took them and went to law school instead_, thought Aile.

"You, in the back."

"Is it true that President Beeblebrox used his powers as president to make _Playbeing_ Magazine move their Worst-Dressed Sentient Being in the Galaxy voting offices next to the presidential voting offices and not put up any signs saying what either building was for to sway the public into voting for him for a second term?"

Aile paused. A bit too long.

"Umm…you look like a smart enough guy, what do you think the answer is? Next question! Yes, you."

* * *

**Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Center**

"Arthur Dent to visit Zaphod Beeblebrox," said the guard.

The cell door slid open.

A man with light ruffled hair and tired looking eyes walked into the cell.

The door shut.

"Well, well, well," said Arthur. "President Beeblebrox has finally been caught. I haven't felt this good since I learned Tricia left you."

Zaphod closed his eyes.

"Did you really think you were going to get away with this?" asked Arthur. "I mean, you steal a spaceship, then you steal another one, then you steal another one, and then you go spend a few years at your summer house? I must say, that's one of the most poorly thought-out series of crimes I've ever heard of. I don't even know why you're bothering with a trial. You're definitely going to be convicted, you doubt about that. I'd just admit what I did and take it, if I were—"

"If you were who?" interrupted Zaphod angrily. "If you were _me?_ If you were me, then I'd be you, and if I were you, I would _shut the hell up! _For God's sake, shut up! That's all you monkeys ever do! Talk! Even if someone doesn't _care_ what your saying! Even if your saying something to someone who _already knows_ what you're saying! _That is insane!_ So just shut the hell up!"

Arthur took a step back.

"I…er…sorry…I didn't mean to offend you…"

"It's okay," said Zaphod. "You know what? You're right. I've been caught. I'm going to go to jail. Right?"

"Uh…right."

"Guaranteed?"

"I suppose so…"

"So, there wouldn't be much purpose trying to commit any other crimes?"

"Well, no…"

"Because I'm already going to jail?"

"Er…yes."

"So what you're saying is, I could still commit a crime, and it wouldn't matter, because I'm already going to jail?"

Arthur paused.

"I…guess…so…"

"Perfect!" said Zaphod. "So, I can kill you, and it wouldn't matter?"

"Umm…well…I guess—wait, _what?"_

"I have three arms," said Zaphod. "I can strangle you with two and hold your nose with one. It would be a very painful death."

Arthur was now quite nervous.

"That is," said Zaphod, "unless…"

He paused, as if he was trying to find the right words.

"Unless…" Zaphod stopped.

Arthur could see his eyes, all four of them, brimming with a strong emotion.

"You want to know what happened to Tricia, don't you?" said Arthur.

Zaphod looked down.

"Yeah."

"Look, I know it must have been hard losing her," said Arthur. "I did, too. When I first met her. I had never felt so in love…and then you came along, mentioning in passing that you weren't born on Earth. She found that funny. So she left with you. I thought I would never see her again. And then I found her, with you. I didn't know how to feel."

Zaphod still looked down.

"You remember how it happened?"

"I think so…it was on Krikkit, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. In the computer room, with that huge kill-bot. You, and Ford, and Marvin were there. I don't remember what she was saying…just insulting me, stuff like that…I should've listened to her…God…I didn't realize how much she meant to me until she left…and I bet you can imagine what I felt like when I heard she was dead."

"What?"

"Nothing…but anyway, I just really hope she doesn't testify against me…"

Zaphod paused.

"Wait a minute…um…"

Zaphod squinted his eyes.

"Are you going to testify against me, Arthur?"

Arthur looked shocked. He had never expected to hear his name come from that voice.

"You said my name…" murmured Arthur.

He then realized that there was a chance Zaphod was just calling him by his real name so Arthur would think he was nice enough to testify for.

"Yeah, I did," said Zaphod. "Are you with me or against me, Arthur?"

Arthur paused.

"I don't know," he said.

"Visiting time's over," called the guard.

Arthur stood up and left the cell. The door shut behind him.


	9. Witness Roundup

Somewhere out in the cosmos, far out of the Milky Way (the galaxy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), is a place that isn't even in any galaxy at all. Nor is it in any nebula, cluster or any other celestial body. It is just floating in the middle of space, unnoticed by creation.

Only 16 people know of this place.

It can only be reached by 12 of these people.

The 4 people who cannot get to it are named Beeblebrox, McMillian, Zarniwoop and someone who has no name.

This is because it is covered by a vast Improbability Field, which makes an arrival at the planet one number improbable short of impossible.

Zarniwoop and the person with no name can reach this place, and in fact live on it, but if they ever left, they wouldn't be able to find their way back to it. But that's okay—they have no immediate plans to leave it. That is, alone.

* * *

**July 21, 2011**

The man frowned.

He picked up the pencil and touched it against the window. Nothing happened.

He took the pencil over to his table, touched the pencil to a piece of paper, and it made a mark. The man looked at the pencil, and then back at the window.

"Window doesn't catch the pencil," he murmured to himself. "The pencil doesn't mark window…pencil marks the paper…paper and window different, I think."

There was a low hissing noise coming from the sky.

The man did not know what was causing the hissing, but he could hear it with his own ears, so he found it a good idea to assume it existed. He looked around the room for a moment, found nothing that could be making the noise, and finally tried opening the window and looking outside.

Outside, some sort of object was hurtling through space towards the ground outside his window. He didn't know what it was.

When it finally hit the ground a few yards from his house, it was a metal cylindrical object, about two feet long. It was a canister, with a seal embossed on it—a G, with lines around it, to simulate the symbol of an atom.

Seeing as it had already managed to find its way to his house by itself, the man assumed that if it was for him, it would find its way to him. But from where he was, it looked like it had come for the ground.

He was soon partially disproved when the two sides of the canister slid off, and an air pressurized arrow shot out from the object, smashed through the shack's window, at finally hit the wall.

A piece of paper that had been attached to the arrow and rolled up now rolled open, still attached to the arrow, hanging in the air.

The man (who was not startled at all, seeing as the arrow had not hit him, and because he didn't know if it was sharp or not seeing as the tip of the arrow was stuck in the wall) now turned to the arrow, wondering if it was for him.

These were the words on the piece of paper:

_Federal Police Department  
__Galactic Federal Government_ _Damogram_

_To whom it may concern, _

_Criminal Zaphod Vazenus Beeblebrox has recently been arrested and will be receiving a trial within the next few days. The police department has reason to believe you have come into contact with the defendant in the past and we request your testimony at his trial. Due to the nature of your meeting, you have been selected as a prosecuting witness. If you wish to change your testimonial to defense, you will be allowed to make a complaint before your testimony. Federal officers will arrive to bring you to the planet Damogram in two hours. _

_Lieutenant Sench Hoksh _

_Galactic Federal Police Department_

The man did not understand everything about the note, but he got the message that someone was going to come to visit him, but he didn't know when, since he had no way of measuring time.

He left the note on his table and went to get some salmon for him and the Lord, since it may have been suppertime.

* * *

**Betelgeuse V**

"_Password."_

The hand reached up and typed in the numbers on the small numeric keyboard.

26-1-16-8-5-4.

The cover slid over the keyboard. After a few seconds, it opened back up. The keyboard was gone. In its place was an LCD pad in the shape of a hand.

"_Handprint."_

The hand did not press itself against the LCD pad. It instead took out an aerosol canister and sprayed oil on the pad. It then took out a napkin and pressed it against the pad. The natural oils of the last good handprint that touched the pad, having been loosened by the oil that was sprayed on, soaked into the napkin to the other side. The hand flipped over the napkin and pressed it against the LCD pad. The pan scanned the oils, and eventually the cover slid closed again.

"_Eye scan."_

The cover opened up. In its place was an electronic eye.

Finding out how to get past this one was a little harder to figure out than the others were. What the hand then did was hold up a mirror to the electronic eye and press the button that made the electronic eye scan whatever it was looking at. Normally, the electronic eye scanned an actual eye, but now, the scan hit the mirror and bounced back towards the electronic eye. The scan hit the eye, but since it was made of transparent glass, the scan went right past it, and into the inner eye scan mechanisms located right behind the electronic eye, where the image of eyes from all the previous scans went. The scan, having hit the correct image of the eye, not knowing it was looking at the same picture it had captured last time it had been used, registered this as the correct eye. The cover closed over the electronic eye.

The cover slid open again. It was a sound wave screen.

The electronic synthetic voice said its fourth statement.

"_Welcome home, Zaphod."_

The cover of the security pad slid closed for the final time. The door next to it slid open.

But Zaphod Beeblebrox did not walk in it.

The man who walked in was not a 5-foot-8-inch tall two-headed green-eyed Betelgeusian with way too much conditioner in his hair seeing as the label had said "repeat", so he had lathered his head/heads a total of four times, forgot how many times he was actually supposed to lather, and ended up doing it 869 times before his cold water cooler gave up and exploded.

The man who walked in was a 5-foot-3-inch tall one-headed brown-eyed Mentiselian with combed back coffee bean hair and a terribly large smirk on his face.

The room the Mentiselian found himself in was a very large kitchen with a five-story refrigerator with an elevator next to it. The man, whose name happened to be Gag Halfrunt, took out a small lithium-plated plasma powered deoxyribose nucleic acidic ultra-scanner version 2.4, and flicked a tiny switch.

The whole room lit up with a blue light in the shape of a grid, registering the exact shape of the room and everything in this self-shaped room.

There was a tiny click from the ultra-scanner.

"DNA located," explained the scanner, upon having scanned the room for any trace of DNA from a preset individual, whose name was not Gag Halfrunt yet was previously mentioned in this section nonetheless, which happened the be fingerprints from a large toaster.

The image of the aforementioned fingerprints appeared on a small screen on the ultra-scanner.

The man then pulled open what looked like a small, average bowl—like the ones used to transport cereal—but with small lights imbedded into the rim.

The man took out a small disk from the ultra-scanner and placed it in the bowl. The disk dissolved into a gelatinous teal liquid. The man turned the bowl horizontally. The liquid poured out, hitting the ground not as a puddle, but as the shape, of a person, whose liquidine features soon faded away, and were replaced by skin, hair, clothes and external organs. The figure was that of a person who was currently awaiting trial in the remote planet of Damogram—not that the man in question knew where this person was. All the man knew was that all he needed was a clone of the person on Damogram—and all he needed to make a clone was a sample of DNA from the person (which he had obtained from the ultra-scanner, the DNA in question being the fingerprints off the toaster), and then he fed it into the bowl, which located what sort of DNA it had found (fingerprints), located who the DNA was from (Zaphod Beeblebrox), and then it would use this information to create a copy of every body part the person had, except for the part it already had (fingerprints), and then a clone was made.

It was quite a simple process.

The resulting clone looked, sounded, felt, smelt, and though it was, Zaphod Beeblebrox.

The man proceeded to use this close to go down to the owner of the house's vault (which, even though its name doesn't matter, was a Sirius Cybernetics Corp NeverHack Vault, though admittedly a few years old), use the clone as a bio-key (you needed the body of the owner of the vault to get past, so the owner of the vault is known as the bio-key), which the machine did not notice was _not_ the actual bio-key, but a clone of the bio-key, and the door swung open. This revealed several trillion Altarian dollars (or Þ, as the symbol goes). The man used a small portable matter transference beam used only for quickly teleporting recently stolen money. Transporting stolen money was not its purpose, but this happened to be all it was used for, which went unbeknownst by the marketers of the TransPort (which stood for Transporter Portable, the two of which sounded very good together, by a fortunate coincidence), which was also made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corp, and the name of which is also pointless to point out.

The money disappeared, and it was all sent to the private safety deposit box of user #4468239.

Stealing all of Zaphod Beeblebrox's money had not been Gag Halfrunt's original plan, but, he knew what they say—when in Klaxoun IV, do as the Klaxoun IVians do.

Gag Halfrunt then took the clone to the mail room and, with no more reason to keep him, sent him off to a random planet (namely, Andromeda IX), where, though pointless to point out, went on to be convinced that he was Zaphod Beeblebrox, remain uncontradicted for several hours, mistaken for Zaphod Beeblebrox, been confused by claims that he wasn't, denied said claims, proven to that he was certainly not Zaphod Beeblebrox, find out that he was a clone, realize that he was not actually alive, have a mental breakdown, wander around the Galaxy for several years searching for his own humanity, and finally hunker down and become the most successful celebrity lookalike in history until accidentally falling through a time-wormhole and dying in a bus crash who was driven by a man who Zaphod Beeblebrox's clone failed to notice was drunk, which I cannot say that same about the actual Zaphod Beeblebrox, who, while was also riding the bus and noticed the driver was drunk, failed to notice that his clone was another passenger.

But as I said, this is all utterly pointless to point out.

As the professional brain-care specialist exited the room, he walked past a pneumonic tube used to deliver messages, the likes of which were installed at the door of every room of the house, came a rolled up piece of paper.

He looked around, paused, and opened it.

It was from the government. Zaphod Beeblebrox had been arrested. Gag Halfrunt was to be a defending witness. To track him down, they used the security device implanted in all clothes from the brand he was wearing—a particularly expensive brand, which thieves liked to buy after stealing enough money to afford them.

Gag Halfrunt cursed his expensive taste.

* * *

Here is what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has to say on the subject of towels: 

_Just about the most massively useful thing any interstellar Hitchhiker can carry. For one thing it has great practical value._

If you own a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then you know what the next line will be. If you don't, then hello you Jatravartid, Vogon, Earthling, Krikkitian, Brontitallite, Lamuellon, or Mr. Junior Vice President Neausajz Denatrak of the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Corporation.

To all of you, I would like to tell you that the next line of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's entry on towels is as follows:

_You can wrap it around you for warmth on the cold moons of Jaglan Beta._

The man who wrote this entry was the second most person in the Universe who fully understood the usefulness of towels, Ford Prefect. The man who understands the usefulness of towels most in the Universe is named Roosta Neffa. Roosta Neffa and Ford Prefect were both quite good friends, by what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would call, "a startling coincidence."

* * *

**Second Moon of Jaglan Beta**

The man who knew appreciated the usefulness of towels the most in the entire Universe was doing just that—wrapping his towel around him for warmth on the cold moons of Jaglan Beta.

He found himself in a cave.

It wasn't a particularly nice cave. Quite bleak in fact. Squalid.

He knew what his mother would say.

_It's rustic. Rugged. You enjoy those sort of things, don't you, Roogy? You and that towel of yours...what better to do with a man who loves a towel more than his own mother than to get a job writing for a book run by a bunch of people with exactly the same idea about life. Oh, well...I still think you should get a ship, stop wandering around strange planets, hitchhiking your way across the Galaxy...it's a scary place, you know. You won't always have my salt cookies to cheer you up if you're lonely. Anyway, this must be deadly to my phone bill, so goodbye now!_

Roosta, of course, did not have a phone.

He looked up at the sky.

He had come there to see if there was any gold in an undiscovered mine on the eastern side of the moon. He had found some small turquoise crabs, but no gold.

He had left his sub-etha wave band on perpetually during his stay on the moon, incase anyone was lost enough to wander into the moon's airspace.

Roosta refused to check his sub-etha wave band when it gave a tiny blip to show that someone may have been nearby. He was convinced that no one was ever coming for him. He was convinced there was no point.

The wave band blipped again. Louder, this time.

Roosta still ignored it.

Every few seconds, the blip sounded again, and it grew and grew.

After a few minutes, the wave band was on its full volume, furiously screaming out that something was passing through the atmosphere, and that he should somehow acknowledge this.

Roosta would have turned the dreadfully annoyingly loud device off, so he could fully pretend it didn't exist, but that would involve touching it, and touching it would involve acknowledging its existence, which he refused to do.

The sub-etha wave band was right. A small ship landed on the moon, about 30 yards from the cave. The side of it was emblazoned with a large G with lines around it, to signify the shape of an atom.

A messenger walked out. He was young, quite thin, like someone on one of his first runs. Rings hung around his eyes, but in a strange way—he didn't look tired, he just looked like his face was like that.

Full of an almost eerie amount of energy, the messenger walked up to Roosta quickly, handed him a piece of paper, and in a voice that showed that he was trying to do the best job he could but he was still a bit shy, said, "Message for you," went back to his spaceship with the big atomic G, and coasted off into space.

Roosta read the note, reflected on it for a few minutes.

He then had an idea for something neat to look at.

He took out a lighter, waited until a particularly strong gust of wind blew, lit the paper on fire, and watched silently as the shining embers coasted off into the wind and out of few, a stream of sparks trailing behind it.

He then paused, and realized that he could've used the paper and lighter to start a bonfire.

He swore for a consecutive two hours, until he was sent for.

* * *

Back in the place covered by the Improbability Field, its second resident bit into a fish. 

The second resident was named Downid Zarniwoop.

He had lived on the planet for around 6 and a half years. Ever since he had met the Ruler of the Universe. He and an old friend of his, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and his girlfriend, Trisha or something, had landed on this planet in the _Heart of Gold_, which was the final stage of their plan to find out the truth about the Universe.

It was ruled by a small man in a shack who had a very bleak sense of reality.

Zarniwoop had left the shack, only to find that the ship was gone. He had tried going back to the shack, only to find it was locked.

He had decided his best move was to make his way down the path leading from the shack. He had ended up at the beach of a small ocean, which was the only thing on the small planet, other than the small mainland (the only thing it being a small shack inhabited by a small man and a small cat), and several small uninhabited islands.

Zarniwoop, after a few months of construction, had managed to construct a makeshift raft to see if he could explore the planet.

Over the course of six and a half years, he had explored every part of it. He obtained his food mostly from fish and berries he found on the various islands.

He was able to get into the Ruler of the Universe's house about once per year. He knew not to talk to him about the past or anything that wasn't readily viewable or accessible in the room they were in.

Now that Zarniwoop had grown to understand the man better, they had not become friends, but they were able to remain on a good basis. The man would share some of his brandy and coffee with Zarniwoop, and then Zarniwoop would leave to make sure his raft stayed together.

The man would always forget about Zarniwoop after a few minutes.

Zarniwoop had not been contacted at all since had came to the planet. He would often sail over to the shack to see if anyone was there that could take him off the planet, but he was always anywhere from several months to several minutes late. This would result in a streak of crying for several hours.

He had managed to adapt to his surroundings. Eating fish in the sea or berries from the islands, stealing wood from the walls of the shack if he needed to patch up his raft.

All in all, life was not good, but it was not bad.

He was in a purgatorial state of non-existence.

He called his life this because he was almost certain that no one knew he was still alive.

But people did know he was still alive. The government did.

Zarniwoop was sailing in the sea on his raft, biting into a fish he had caught a few minutes ago, when the message came.

It came in the form of a buoy—a green one, made of a thick waterproof type of metal.

Zarniwoop regarded the buoy with curiosity. Six years of sailing around catching fish on a strange planet can really do a number on your state of mind.

The small door opened up on the buoy, revealing a glass screen, electronic words beginning to scroll across it.

Deep in Zarniwoop's subconscious, his mind began to pick up this as words, and he began reading it, but only in the back of his mind—having no idea what the symbols meant, but the message registering in his brain.

_A man...someone I once knew...bad man...in the eyes of the law...good man really...helped me get here...left me here...want me to go to him...talk about him...where...?_

The raft floated silently for two hours, until it washed up on shore.

The process of selection of the Ruler of the Universe had been an arduous one.

It was a rigorous process of elimination that took about 37 years, dozens of interlinked supercomputers furiously charging data about every known person in the Universe.

Until finally, after all the information was tallied up, everything pointed to one man. The man who wanted to not be the Ruler of the Universe was found.

He was a tall man. Very thin, but not exactly bony, which is a hard thing to do.

His skin was faded. Not tan, but the kind that showed he had not had a lot of exposure to light from inside his shack, constantly surrounded by rain clouds.

His deep blue eyes glimmered on his face under messy dirty-blond hair. His cheerful, yet somewhat odd smile showed that even though he was slightly out of touch with reality, and had a very dim view of time, he was terribly polite for the sole reason that he couldn't see any reason not to be.

The man indeed did not care to rule any universes, nor did he care to do much more than get some food to eat, share it with his cat, play with his cat and play with a pencil, and politely explain this to whoever began ranting and raving about the fact that his decisions affected the lives of billions of people.

Clearly, as anyone from a face who have already realized that huts make much better homes that caves could see, this man was _grossly_ unfit to rule the Universe.

Which was why he was perfect to do it.

This all went through the mind of one Nesh Setarln, a fairly high-up bailiff, who had been fully briefed about this guy.

He knew everything about this guy, including that he was pretty hard to talk to clearly. He also knew to make sure not to talk to him about the past.

* * *

The _Heart of Gold_, now having been successfully confiscated from Zaphod Beeblebrox, landed with a crunch on the hard gravel and bits of overgrown vegetation scattered around the space in front of the Ruler of the Universe's house. 

Three figures, silhouetted against the low light of the dimming day, trudges slowly across the ground and up to a tiny shack.

A hand reached up and knocked on the door.

The door opened.

"Hello," said the man.

"You're the Ruler of the Universe?" asked Nesh Setarln.

"So I hear," said the man with a smile. "Is it hot out?"

Nesh looked around.

"Um…not really. Why?"

"The aquiration of knowledge is the greatest gift a sentient being can receive," said the man.

"Right," said Nesh. "Did you get our letter?"

"I'm not sure," said the man. "I have a letter, but I don't know where I got it. It might be from you. Is it from you?"

"What does it say?"

"I'm not always sure if what I pick up as words from a collection of symbols is actually words, but I think someone wants we to come with them to a place called Damogram. I've never heard of it, but they seem quite fixated on their idea of its existence."

Nesh frowned.

"Yes, that was from us," he said. "And Damogram is a real place. We need you to come with us, to Damogram."

"How do you know it's a real place?"

"We just left it a few minutes ago."

"How do you know you went there?"

"I remember it, really clearly."

"And you trust memory?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Ah, but memory is just a collections of vague sensory perceptions inside the back of your mind, and without any full proof, memory is the most unreliable entity in the Universe."

Nesh paused, trying to work out this strange collection of existential arguments.

"But you control the Universe," he said finally.

"I control only what happens in my universe. Whatever happens to anyone else, if they do exist, is entirely unconcerning to me."

"Then what do you do if someone asks for advice?"

"I don't follow."

"If someone comes to you and says their country is a colony of another larger, oppressing country, and they want to separate, but they're not allowed to. And they can either stay under their current rule, or they can try to revolt, and if they win, they're free, but if they lose, they'll have lost hundreds of lives for no reason, and they'll still be oppressed. The ask you what they do, what do you say?"

"I'd say the truth, which is that I think that they should make sure the two countries actually exist."

"But they just came from it."

"But from here, I can't see anywhere else. I hear these people say they come from far away, but I can't tell that. I can't give advice about something that I doubt the existence of."

"You can't give advice at all!"

"That all depends on what you want advice on."

"But you have to believe that there's a whole expanse of creation out there!"

Nesh pointed to the sky.

"Don't you see the stars! Don't you know those are whole other worlds!"

"I see them, but I don't know what they are."

"But all these people who come to you! Us, even! Where do you think we all come from!"

"They tell me they come from far away, but I don't know that. And after they leave, I'm left with just an imprint of them in my mind, which may prove to be vastly unreliable."

"Well, well, well, you don't know if there's actually hundreds of quadrillions of planets and worlds out there?"

"No."

"Well, we've got a treat for you. We're taking you to one of them."

The man said nothing for a second.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you once met someone," said Nesh, "and we need you to talk about your meeting with him. You don't remember him, but we know you've met him."

The man said nothing again. He had nothing to say.

"But there's someone else on this zarkforsaken rock we need to take with us," said Nesh.

* * *

A trillion miles away on a distant planet, a large black ship with an Atom G landed on a large and rather flashy landing pad. 

Three people got out of the ship and strode over to a large and rather flashy mansion.

The person leading the front, another bailiff from Damogram named Sen Culmeon, walked up to the door, just as Gag Halfrunt had.

She flipped open the security pad and pressed the starter.

"_Password,"_ said the computer voice.

Sen did not enter in the password 26-1-16-8-5-4 as Gag Halfrunt had, but she did enter in a password.

4-1-14-15-7-8-1-14.

Like all security systems, this password, only ever entered in by the Galactic Police, quickly overrode all the other security checks and the door slid open.

Sen took out a type of advanced GPS system, entered in the coordinates for Gag Halfrunt's DNA, and the device showed her that Gag Halfrunt was at the backdoor on the other side of the house furiously trying to break it down after he had learned that the police have the power to lock any electronic door or window in the Galaxy instantaneously.

Sen and the two other officers made there way to the backdoor (which happened to be a large sliding window door that led out into a swimming pool on a patio).

Gag Halfrunt turned around, trying to make sure his smile stayed ear to ear.

"Hello," said Gag. "I didn't expect any armed policemen over here tonight…"

"What are you doing in this house?"

"I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox's brain care specialist," said Gag, his face not showing a hint of untruthfulness. "I needed to make frequent house calls, so a lot of my supplies was left over here. I was given permission to come over and get anything if I left it here by the owner of this house."

"Really. What did you come to get?"

"A lot of my methods involved imagetherapy. I used the light reflecting off the water in the pool the calm his eyes."

"And what were your supplies that you left here?"

"A glass that I used to protect my clients' eyes from UV rays during imagetherapy."

Sen held up what to you would have looked like a car key. She pressed a button on it and the door lock clicked open. She nodded to the officers. They followed Gag out onto the patio.

Gag, having contacted the Physiotherapists Union several minutes ago, was happy to find a delicate-looking magnifying glass lying on the patio next to the pool.

"Why," asked Sen, "did you wait until now to get it?"

"I was in jail, for a crime I didn't commit. I was put in for a ten year sentence for blowing up a molasses factory and sending a giant pile of goo all over the town."

"And, you were proven innocent."

"Yes."

"You know I don't believe a word of it."

"Yes…no…yes…"

"Well, there's a chance we can drop the investigation if you come with us."

"Ah, yes…Mr. Beeblebrox got caught, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"And you want me to help you guys bring him down?"

"We already have proof of what he did. It's no longer a question of bringing him down, it's a question of how down he goes."

"And you want that to be pretty far, huh?"

"That's what I've heard."

"Well, I _am_ testifying for the defense…"

"You're allowed to switch."

"So, is this a proposition?"

"It could be. Sergeant Hoksh said that's up to you."

Gag grinned.

* * *

Out on the cold second moon on Jaglan Beta, another black ship streaked across the sky and skidded to a halt on the cold rocky surface. 

Two officers and a bailiff named Heshenawk Romn stepped out of it.

Heshenawk took out a device that resembled a fire lighter. He flicked a small switch on it, and a bright light shot out through the air.

Fifty feet away, in a small cave, a man named Roosta coughed loudly.

He paused and pulled off his air filter band, a headband that worked to filter in oxygen and keep the cold empty space air from suffocating you in a place without an atmosphere.

But something was wrong. Roosta didn't need it anymore. He was fine.

He wondered if he had died, but then he remembered that he had gone to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe that night six years ago, he had seen Zarquon come. This was proof that God really existed, so he knew unless God was much crueler than he had thought, he would either be in heaven or hell.

Suddenly, three men in police uniforms ran up to him.

"Roosta Neffa," said the one in front. "Come with us."

"What? Why? What's going on?"

"We're from the government. You were sent a message two hours ago?"

"Yeah, I got it."

"Well, we've come to pick you up."

"Wait—why don't I need an air filter band anymore?"

"Um, our engines microwave excretion knocks out the 02 carrier signal AFB's have. I needed to activate a temporary ECA—Electromagnetically Charged Atmosphere—to be able to get here."

"Okay," said Roosta. He paused and said, "Wait, what about that messenger? He didn't need an ECA."

"Yeah…he suffocated about two minutes after he left here. The ship crashed into Jaglan, and the body was incinerated in the explosion."

"Wow."

"Anyway, as I said, it's only temporary," said Heshenawk, "so we have to get out of here."

"Sounds like a plan."

Roosta gripped his towel as hard as he could as he walked towards the ship.

About twenty feet from the ship, he picked up his copy of the _Guide_ and threw it away. It landed on the gravel with a crunch.

_Won't be needing that piece of junk anymore_, thought Roosta with a smile, glancing down at his towel, in which he was carrying about Þ100,000 worth of gold he had found during the two hours waiting for the police.

* * *

Back on the planet with no name, Nesh Setarln said to the Ruler of the Universe, "I'm going to have to inject you with a truth serum." 

"What does that do?" asked the Ruler of the Universe.

"It makes you tell the truth," he explained.

"That's strange."

"Why?"

"Because I always tell the truth."

"Yes, but you said you have a bad memory. A truth serum will make sure you answer questions truthfully about anything, no matter how bad your memory of it is."

"Oh, I see."

* * *

A raft slowly floated up on the shore. 

Zarniwoop knew the first figure, but the second one he didn't recognize.

"Mr. Downid Zarniwoop?" said the second man. "I'm Officer Nesh Setarln of the Galactic Federal Police. You got our message?"

Zarniwoop swallowed, his throat feeling strange from such an extended period of silence.

"Yes," he rasped.

"I need you to come with us."

"Um…all right…"

Zarniwoop crawled onto the shore and made his way up to the two men. He stood up slowly.

"Hello again," he said to the Ruler of the Universe.

"Hello," said the man. "You're coming with us?"

"I suppose so," said Zarniwoop.

He shook his head vigorously. Water dripped down his face.

"Time to see your kingdom, huh?" said Zarniwoop.

The three of them, and the two other police officers, so actually the five of them, made their way to the black ship with the G on it.

Two minutes later, all three ships kicked into action, sped off the surface of Betelgeuse V, the second moon of Jaglan Beta and the planet with no name, and into the inky, starry void.


	10. Intelligent Life

Author's Notes: Sorry for the very long delay, but I now have my 10th chapter up. Though I guess, to you guys, it's only my 9th chapter, since it would seem that you didn't know I have already put up a 9th chapter, or else one of you would review it, which you didn't.

**July 23, 2011 **

Witness Holding Center, Damogran

"_Welcome to 7D Gal./Sid. News, the best coverage in interplanetary weather, sports and news brought to you here on the sub-etha wave band, broadcasting around the galaxy, around the clock, and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere... and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys._

"_And of course, our big news story tonight—preparation for the Zaphod Beeblebrox trial! Our scouts down on Damogran tell us a new batch of witnesses have arrived; most notably, Downid Zarniwoop, former president of the Ursa Minor Beta publishing offices of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for years thought to have been dead ever since his disappearance back in 03959, now proved to far from dead, yet nevertheless remain slightly dirty and the owner of an out-of-style suit. No word yet on where we was though._

"_Remaining with the theme of the _Guide_, an unnoted Guide reporter, Roosta Neffa, has also arrived at Damogran from a journey to the second moon of Jaglan Beta (believed to be the most deserted moon of any Betalian planets, to which only two ships have ever landed on, both of them flown by people described as being "terribly lost"), which had caused suspicious that he would never find his way back into mainstream society. Also, our scouts have told us that two people came on Zarniwoop's ship, though no one seems to know who the second person is. More on that later. Oh, and before we continue, there was another person coming along on the witness flights—Gag Halfrunt, Zaphod Beeblebrox's private brain-care specialists, who our viewers may remember, appeared for four-second interview six years ago, the night Zaphod originally stole the Starship _Heart of Gold. _And now, the question remains, did Gag come to act as a witness, or to help the ex-president through this psychologically trying time? And, if so, there's the other question—has the Big Z finally flipped? Hehe—nah, that happened a long time ago. But has it happened again? More on that later._

_"Our second top news story tonight—another Hrung has collapsed, this time on Diadem III!"_

Ford Prefect glanced up.

"_It's true!"_ continued the announcer. _"The worst Hrung since 03758, make that the only Hrung since then that our Galaxy has ever seen!"  
_  
Ford's eyes remained glued to the screen. He had originally just tuned in to see if they mentioned his name on any news reports (they hadn't), but now he thanked as many gods as he could think of.

A cold silence fell over the hotel room, the only sound in the room being the crystal clear OHD (Overwhelmingly High Definition) voice of the news anchor reverberate against the drywall.

_"Now, for those of you who don't know,"_ said the newscaster, _"a Hrung is sssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."  
_  
The reporter didn't actually say this, of course, but to anyone who wasn't watching the screen, it would've sounded like that, because the screen suddenly turned to static, and both the sound and the picture were lost.

Ford Prefect's eyes remained frozen, too surprised to move.

Ford did not realize that the static he was looking could only come from the disturbance of sub-etha waves brought on by a clone of an ex-president falling through a wormhole in spacetime.

Ford watched the screen for about 15 seconds before he stood up, ran over to the door, opened it, rushed into the hallway, ran across the hall, and skidded to a stop outside Arthur Dent's room.

He furiously knocked on the door.

"Arthur!" called Ford to the door.

"Yes?" answered the door, or at least a voice coming from behind it.

"Open the door!"

"Ford?"

"Yes, open the door!"

"Why, what is it?"

"Just open the door! Hurry!"

"Alright, hold on."

"I can't hold on, just open the damn door!"

"Umm…Ford?"

"What?"

"I can't."

"What?"

"I can't open the door."

"Why not?"

The door paused sarcastically.

"Well, it's written in Galactispeke, my electric card key's AI doesn't seem to like my enough to listen to me, and it's about two hundred years more advanced than any hotel door technology than I've ever seen."  
_  
Bloody sapien_, thought Ford, now getting the hang of sarcasm. "Okay, okay, I'm going to break down the door."

"Umm…what?"

"Stand back!"

"I'm already cowering behind the curtains," said the door, its voice slightly quieter.

Ford took out his towel, walked over to the water fountain a few feet away, soaked the towel in water, walked back over to the door and wrapped the towel around the card key port.

There was a quite shock of light, and a few sparks fell off the door, but at least the electric lock was shorted out, which would make it possible for his to break down the door.

He took out a Kill-o-Zap pistol (after that encounter on Magrathea with those dreadful liberal cops, he had found that Kill-o-Zap's are quite effective.

He held up the gun to the hinge and launched a single flash of electric radiation.

* * *

"Okay," called Ford's voice from behind the door. "Okay, I'm going to break down the door." 

Arthur stared at the door, and began backing up towards the window.

"Umm…what?" he called, as he crouched down behind the curtains.

"Stand back!" called Ford.

Arthur explained his current location.

There was a pause, and for about twenty seconds, nothing happened. Arthur didn't begin to try to guess what Ford was doing.

Then there was a loud buzzing sound, like the sound of a taser. Arthur shut his eyes.

There was the sound of a small explosion, followed by a burst of sparks showering the floor, followed by a lightly toasted door falling to the ground.

Ford Prefect rushed into the room, stuffing some sort of ray gun into his satchel, tossing the satchel on the ground next to the bed,and hurling himself in front of the TV.

He quickly walked back and forth as the TV motion detectors searched for the station he was looking for.

The TV switched on, showing some sort of news show.

Arthur began to wonder how you can turn on a TV by walking in front of it.

Ford, however, did not even blink, which is very easy for a Betelgeusian to do.

"…_which causes the Hrung to collapse,"_ said the newscaster. _"Wow, I never actually knew what a Hrung was until I read it on the teleprompter. Anyway, I'm afraid what one is is pretty much all we can tell you about this Hrung, since all our cameras were destroyed in the collapse, along with anyone who could have told us anything about it."_

Ford's whole body tightened.

"Arthur."

"Yes?"

"Take that Babel fish out of your ear."

"Why?"

"Because I am about to swear very much, and I think it'd be better if you didn't understand what I was saying."

"Um…alright…wait, how exactly does one go about removing a fish from one's ear?"

"Simple. Think something in a different language. You'll stop emitting alpha waves and start emitting beta waves, since you're not thinking in your normal brain path. The Babel fish'll drop right out."

"Um…alright…_voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir_."

Ford, who had studied many Earth languages during his time there, including French as well as English, stared at Arthur for a few seconds before realizing that he probably didn't understand what he had said.

The Babel fish wriggled out of Arthur's ear.

"Good," said Ford in English. He then inhaled deeply and began shouting in someone Arthur couldn't even begin to try to understand.

"Geshen emmelsh onofoads sotrashna sech malfomk neshel rosheff!" howled Ford. "Roshan ultiroll kosh, shen greb nevine wequezzan! Koshin shem naffem leshiked! Leffosh Zarquon, meshen bleruben!"

He collapsed on the bed like the Hrung he didn't know anything about.

"Okay," he muttered in English, his voice strained and breathless. "You can put the Babel fish back in your ear."

**

* * *

July 22, 2011 **

GFLEC Landing Bay, Damogran

The ship coasted down onto the pad as the landing gear let out a hiss of compression.

An exit port opened up and an escalator folded itself out of the ship until it reached the ground.

Gag Halfrunt stepped onto the escalator and felt the dry Damogranian wind against his face.

When he got to the ground, he stepped off the escalator and looked over to see another ship landing.

Two men walked out.

One of them was a short man wearing a faded suit torn in several places. The other man consumed Gag's interest much more.

The man was a tall, thin man with an unshaven face, faded skin and straw-coloured hair. He walked in a sort of glide, and his body seemed to be tense, seeing as the heat of Damogran felt strange against his life on a cold, humid planet.

Gag knew all about this man.

Zaphod Beeblebrox had only sent him one message since he had disappeared, and that had been about the fact that someone named Zarniwoop told him that years ago, the two of them formed a plan to find out who the Ruler of the Universe actually was. He gave Gag all the details he knew about what had happened.

Gag had already formed a plan in his head.

He reached into a satchel he carried with him and pulled out a machine that had the same function, yet was nothing like, a video camera.

He waited until the cops he had traveled with weren't looking, then bounded over to the plaza in front of the building.

He approached any random person walked through it and said, "Hey, recognize me?"

"Um…no."

"Gag Halfrunt, Zaphod Beeblebrox's private brain-care specialist."

The strangerpaused, recognizing the name.

"Hm…wait a second…yeah, I remember you from a few years ago. You were on TV, that guy who said, 'Zaphod's just this guy, you know?'"

Gag grinned.

"Yeah, that's me. Look, can you do me a quick favor?"

"Depends, what is it?"

"Well, start take this ReCordEr, okay?"

ReCordEr: full name, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's **Re**fined-definition Re**cord**ing View**er**. Again, a quite good-sounding composite, by another fortunate coincidence.

He took the ReCordEr reluctantly.

"What do I do with this?"

"See that guy over there?"

"Who?"

"That one, right there! With the robe!"

"The one with the light hair?"

"Yeah, great, you've got it."

"You want me to film him?"

"Well, first, I should probably tell you who it is. That man…"

"So far, so good."

"…is the Ruler of the Universe."

The person regarded Gag with a strange look.

"Cool."

"I'm serious."

"Who said I wasn't?"

"I am, and I'm telling you, you're wrong. Haven't you ever found it strange that every single president this galaxy, or any other galaxy, as you will see if you do some research, has been grossly unfit for the job? An actor, or an alcoholic, or a soldier, or a schizophrenic. Their job has always been, as is a little-known fact, not to control power, but to draw attention away from those who do it. That's why they always pick such unsuitable candidates. Because it honors and humbles him or her so much, that the sheer joy brought to someone by being in power is so much that they don't have time to realize that they're not. And that is why the president has to be someone unsuitable for the job. They need to have never expected to become president, so they spend the whole term celebrating. That's also why when Zaphod Beeblebrox announced his attention to run for president, a full 17 months before the poles opened, it was more or less a _fait accompli_. He was perfect to be president for the sole reason that he was anything but perfect to be president.

"And in a universe of a hundred thousand million billion trillion quadrillion worlds, all without a leader, who can lead? Someone out of the limelight. Someone in the shadows, who controls the fate of the Universe in his very hands."

"The fate of the Universe is in the hands of a man who just questioned the existence of the ship he just got here in, seeing as he cannot see it from his point of view?"

"Shut up! I'm telling you, that's him! And when you find out I'm right, you're going to be famous for alerting the universe of the truth."

"Why will I be famous?"

"Because you will have given the film of him to every news network you could find."

"What film?"

"The film that you took with the ReCordEr you were given by a man who ran away shortly after giving you instructions on what to do with it."

Gag Halfrunt took off running, and was lost in the crowd around the square within seconds.

The person who held the ReCordEr clumsily held it up and pressed play.

**

* * *

July 23, 2011 **

**Witness Holding Center, Damogran**

Ford Prefect stumbled into his hotel room and nearly tripped upon entry, over a piece of derelict equipment that's full intelligence hadn't been used for a thousand quadrillion years.

"Ow!" said Ford. "Stupid piece of junk lying around. Wait. Hold on. Marvin. He'd know."

Ford crouched down beside the robot and flipped a switch on his left circuit port.

The dim, green light of Marvin's eyes surfaced.

"Oh thank you very much for disturbing my latest fit of lying alone and turned off and wallowing in my own depression which wasn't very fun to do in the first place so I probably should actually thank you even though I already did and I would thank you again but that would be repeating myself and that's something that only primitive trillion-celled organisms do and I'm far more advanced than that and just thinking about what it would be like to be an organism is so depressing that I've lost any positivity that could have been brought to me by you waking me up from my latest fit of lying alone and turned off and wallowing in my own depression, which, I might say, is a _very_ strong emotion in me."

"Oh, yeah, afternoon to you to."

"Are you being sarcastic, or are you just really that unintelligent?"

"Marvin, you're pretty smart, right?"

"I'm so smart, there isn't even a number invented for my IQ yet."

"Well, good, 'cause that huge, depressing head of yours is going to come in handy."

"I doubt it. It never has before."

"Well, maybe you're wrong about that."

"Yes, and maybe I'm wrong about this whole trip not being the most undreadfully unpleasing joy I have even had the strict displeasure to not be displeased at avoiding."

Ford stared at him.

"Do you enjoy torturing organisms?"

"I don't enjoy anything."

"Right, right, stupid question. But here's one that isn't—"

"I doubt it."

"What," said Ford, "is a Hrung?"

"A Hrung? I need an Encyclopedia Galactica to find out what that is. Unfortunately, there isn't any Galactica's around here, just book loaded with useless theories about how the god they're describing is the best. Speaking of sacrilege, doesn't it give a definition in that book you're always carrying around? The sub-etha one? The Freeloaders Handbook to the Universe?"

"Hey, watch it, strag. Hitchhikers take pride in what we do."

"Wandering around the Galaxy aimlessly and hiding from the police in seedy spaceports at 2:00 AM (because you're so drunk you think they want to arrest you for being too cool, while instead they want to invite you to the bake sale on Saturday) chugging down a bottle of Janx while raving on about some beautiful supermodel girlfriend from Sirius you made up while being kicked out of some grungy bar a hundred miles away after punching a fellow drunk after he not only claimed that some bankrupt sports team from whatever dead planet you came from could do better if the first baseman were a one-legged Arctrurian MegaDonkey while waiting to catch a ride on a bus you actually paid for while still trying to maintain an identity as a hitchhiker by carrying around a pink flower-design towel and a book that's most intelligent definition of anything in the Universe comes plagiarized from a cereal box?"

Ford sighed.

"Oh, those were the days…"

Marvin glared at him.

"Anyway," said Ford, "no, if I checked the Guide for an entry on Hrungs, it just says that Hrung is something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unknown by everyone but the inhabitants of Betelgeuse VI. They go on to mention their job offer from anyone from BV, and assure readers that it has nothing to do with Hrungs. Then again, it also says that Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters cure spontaneous combustion, and goes on to advise readers to ignore the fact that the 2,416th acknowledgement of the book is to the Beeblebrox Gargle Blaster Brewing Corporation listed under the "financial contributions" section, so I wouldn't trust everything it says. But don't try to mention this to them, or they'll have a judge expand Life's restraining order from Truth to 200 feet."

"Humans are by far the most depressingly annoying species I have ever had the displeasure to make acquaintance with."

Ford glared at Marvin.

"Okay, so, you don't know what a Hrung is?"

It was Marvin's turn to glare at Ford.

"I never said that. I said I needed an Encyclopedia Galactica to find out what one is."

Ford's face fell. Despite having been raised on Betelgeuse V, he was conceived on Betelgeuse VI, while his father was on his way to V, so his genetic coding was that affected by the amount of radiation from the star Betelgeuse hitting the planet Betelgeuse VI, which was a different amount of the radiation hitting Betelgeuse V (the amount of radiation that hit Betelgeuse V is what caused BV'ers to have to heads, like Zaphod). He wished he had been born on BV, like Zaphod, instead of on BVI, so he could have two heads, or rather two faces, instead of one—one to fall, and one to glare at Marvin coldly.

_Wait a minute_, thought Ford. "Zaphod!" he howled aloud.

"Marvin, look, I know you probably won't care," said Marvin (yes, Marvin, not Ford), "but I gotta run. Thanks for your help, anyway."

Ford stared at Marvin as if the robot had just explained the entire history of the East India Company in three seconds without skipping a detail.

"How did you…?"

"When you've spent 629,000,000,000,000,000,000 years alongside a type of species," said Marvin, "their mode of speech becomes as predictable as what type of vehicle a factory cruiser-making machine will make next. Sound horrid? 'Cause it is."

Ford nodded.

And backed away quickly.

And ran out the door.

* * *

Arthur Dent watched Ford Prefect walk out of the room. 

Arthur shut his eyes. It isn't often that you see a man from Betelgeuse unleash a torrent of alien swears that you couldn't only understand because, at the time, a small leech hadn't been eating your brainwaves.

Arthur Dent didn't often have a lot of time to himself when he could understand what was going on and wasn't dreadfully worried about something that had just happened to him, a time when he could actually hear his own thoughts.

And he thought about his situation.

There was only one other human in the entire universe that could say, truthfully, they that had survived the destruction of the Earth to make a bypass by hitching a ride with an actual UFO, and she was currently a few doors away in a hotel room.

Arthur closed his eyes again, remembering about all he and Tricia had gone through.

He had been in love with her to start, ever since he had first seen her a few weeks before that cocktail party.

He had tracked her down, making sure he knew if there would be an opportunity to meet her in the immediate future, and then his friend over in Islington had invited him to a party that he knew her to be going to. So he waited at home for about ten minutes after the time he should have left, contemplating what to say to her, and eventually decided that if it took him ten minutes to figure out what to say to someone, then he clearly had no hope of coming to a definitive conclusion. And so he left his house in Kilburn and drove over to Islington, and then he met her.

He found she was remarkably easy to talk to. He, of course, didn't think this, he found that when he uttered so much as a word, he was blabbing on and boring her, and if he stopped talking for a second, he was being to quiet and she wouldn't want to talk to someone who wouldn't talk back.

Tricia, actually, found his perfect mix of intelligence, ignorance and embarrassment gave him a sort of squirmy charm. But if Arthur had just been a _bit_ more interesting, she wouldn't have—well, we didn't like to talk about that.

Then he met her again, and until they were separated by about two million years after teleporting off that rock star's ship, their entire time together was like the awkward silence when two people can't think of anything to say, but two weeks long.

Then he had met Fenchurch back on the dolphin's second Earth, and he had so close to completely forgotten her as anyone can get.

But Fenchurch was gone. He remembered the horrible feeling of loss he had suffered after she had been sucked through that pan-dimensional vortex on the plane (It may be in space, but I'm still calling it a plane, thought Arthur to himself), and he decided not to think about that either.

But Tricia was here. The only living remnant left of the greatest planet in the universe, as Arthur thought.

There were only two beings in the universe that held this status.

Arthur paused. He remembered back.

Back past his transportation to Damogran, past his unfortunate experience at Stavro Mueller, back past his journey through spacetime with Ford, past his life on Lamuella, past his journey on the Bistromatics ship, past his life on prehistoric Earth, past the 'B' Ark ship, past the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, past Magrathea, past the _Heart of Gold_ and Zaphod Beeblebrox, past the Vogon Constructor Fleet ship and the Vogon poetry, past the destruction of Earth, past Ford's nonsensical ramblings during lunch at the pub, past the bulldozers and Mr. Prosser of the local council, back almost seven years of his life and more information than a single being can handle, and back to breakfast.

Where he had enjoyed toast and some orange juice.

And he had read the newspaper.

Complete with the headline _DOLPHINS VANISH_.

Over the years, Arthur had gradually learned about what happened to the dolphins.

They had left, before the Earth had been destroyed. Flown away. Sped off into the inky blackness of space. They had survived.

Arthur blinked.

Scratch that. Make it three.

* * *

Ford Prefect nearly tripped, he was running so fast. 

After about twenty minutes of preparation, everything was finally in order for Ford to have a visit.

"Longest twenty minutes of this one of my lives," Ford had kept saying to himself.

But the guard finally told Ford that everything was ready, and he walked through the door. (Yes, through. The door was made of a hyper-advanced and currently undiscovered gas that's instability was quite practically useful, seeing as it, with the right equipment, could be adjusted to a hard and soft state that allowed for it to open or close without moving, or, indeed, opening or closing.)

Zaphod Beeblebrox slumped down on the bench, and the intercom, reading his brainwaves, switched itself on.

"Hey, man," said Zaphod (or at least one of his heads, the other was asleep), "good to—"

Zaphod was interrupted by his second head's snoring. He knocked his awake head against it.

"Huh? What?" said Zaphod, waking up. "Oh, hey, Ford, good to see you!"

"Yeah," said his second head, "but it's, um, kind of late."

"Yeah, I know, but I really gotta ask you something."

"Great. What is it?"

"Well, Zaphod, you're from Betelgeuse V, right?"

"Yeah, I sure am," said Zaphod with a smile, "and proud of it. Well, thanks for asking, see you in court."

Zaphod was just about to get up and leave, but Ford cried, "Wait! Come back!"

Zaphod sat back down.

"What now?"

"That wasn't my question."

"It wasn't?"

"No."

"Well, then, Ford, that poses two problems that you really should sort out with your mode of speech—one, that of tone, you really should learn to not put an inquisitive tone on a phrase that is not a question, and two—you shouldn't add "right" at the end of sentences that aren't questions or else someone might think that you're asking a question, which you're not. Anyway, I think a few months of speech therapy and a few more months of linguistics classes back at Maximegalon should sort these problems out, and once these are done, you can come back here and visit me and you and I can have a nice little speech-mode-correct conversation. Good night."

Zaphod stood up to leave again.

"Seriously, come back and listen to my question!" called Ford.

"All right, but only because you asked me to."

"Okay, great. Now—what is a Hrung?"

"You don't know?"

"No, I don't."

"Really? You don't know what one is?"

"No."

"Well, I've never heard anyone call you an Ix."

"No. Well, after I found the name Ford Prefect, I went back in time and changed my name to Ford Prefect at birth, undoing every time someone had ever called me Ix over the decades."

"Well, Ix, I'm afraid I can't tell you what one is."

"What? Why not?"

"Because when I was a kid, I made a pact with my friends on Betelgeuse to call anyone who doesn't know what a Hrung is (in a specifically strong way, like you) an Ix, and refuse to tell them what one was. I made sure to remember this, because I'm such a hoopy frood that I never go back on a promise unless I really want to, so I made sure to keep this is my mind, even when I locked off all my memories with that Zarniwoop guy. So now, I'm sorry to say, that I really need some sleep, and I'm gonna leave now."

"Bye, Ix," said his other head.

Zaphod get up and walked out. A wave of hatred washed over Ford.

* * *

"Marvin, look," muttered Ford, pushing open his room's door, "I'm not going to pretend I'm sorry for leaving so abruptly, since you'd just point out the fact that I'm lying." 

"At least you're improving," said Marvin glumly.

Ford slumped down face-first on his bed.

"You said you wanted to know what a Hrung is?" said Marvin.

"Yeah," muttered Ford.

"I suppose you want me to tell you now."

"You said you didn't know that."

"I repeat, I never said that. I said that I needed an Encyclopedia Galactica to tell you what one is."

"Yes, but you said you didn't have one."

"I never said that either. I said that there isn't one around here."

"But those two phrases are interchangeable."

"No, there not," said Marvin, thoroughly annoyed. "Look, I said there wasn't one _around_ here. I never said there wasn't one _here_, specifically."

Ford groaned.

"I happen to have an Encyclopedia Galactica installed into my databanks."

"Well, why…didn't…you…tell…me…that?"

"You didn't ask."

"Well, can you tell me what a Hrung is?"

"Yes. A Hrung is a celestial body created through a rather pointless process involving lots of explosions. As I know"—Marvin made sure to say "I," as he was sure that Ford probably didn't know what he was about to say—"there are three kinds of stars: white dwarf, giant and supergiant. All stars in the universe eventually burn out and explode, causing a black hole. Whatever kind of three stars it is, the bigger the black hole. When a dwarf burns out and turns into a black hole, and a giant that has not yet burned out is sucked into it. The structure of a giant star inside a dwarf black hole is known as a Hrung. A Hrung can also be created with a giant black hole and a supergiant star. The Hrung, under the compression of trillions of pounds of matter pressing against it (coupled with the fact that the giant can't actually fit inside the dwarf black hole) causes it to explode so quickly that it generates twice the force of a nova. This explosion is also coupled with the explosion of all the matter in, and sucked up by, the black hole. All this creates for one giant explosion. This explosion, seeing as it causes the gravity mass stability of the Hrung to give out, is also known as a collapse. This has only happened twice, but both times, they had the force to take out an entire large-sized planet, all of its thirteen moons, and every shred of the Prixabetel civilization."

Marvin paused, and added, "Wretched, isn't it?"

Ford stood is stunned silence.

"So…" he murmured, very quietly, "that's what a Hrung is?"

"No," said Marvin. "I don't know what a Hrung is. Galactica doesn't know what a Hrung is, either. I just figured you'd enjoy those ten seconds where you thought you knew what a Hrung was. I didn't, though."

Marvin shut himself off.

* * *

Arthur Dent glanced over beside his bed. 

Ford's satchel was lying beside the bed.

Arthur could remember Ford always carrying it around with him, but he never knew what was in it.

He reached over and picked it up.

Inside, he found a mirror, a sub-etha wave band, some sort of ultra-advanced radio, scissors, a pencil, and a tape recorder.

Arthur picked up the tape recorder—he didn't know why, he just thought it would be a good move.

He looked at the note Ford had scribbled on the cassette inside it.

NOTES ON ASTROLOGY

Arthur frowned. He pressed play.

To his surprise, it was a recording of Monty Python's Galaxy Song, off the radio.

Arthur found himself greeted by the voice of a now dead human, giving off various astronomical facts in a silly and comical way that only the English could do. He found it to be quite fitting for his current lifestyle.

After about two and a half minutes, the last lines reverberated in his mind.

"_Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space  
__'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth."_

Arthur paused to reflect on these lines, and he thought of the aliens he knew.

There was Ford, and Zaphod, the Vogons, Slartibartfast, the Golgafrinchans, Agrajag, Old Thrashbarg, those policemen on Magrathea, those mice, and that alien randomly appeared and insulted him.

Arthur paused for a moment.

Intelligent life somewhere up in space.

_No_, thought Arthur. _Nothing I know of that fits that description._


	11. More Than One Anagram

Author's Notes: I'm kinda busy, so just a quick one, to keep you guys happy.

* * *

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time. 

One of these supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the biros he'd bought over the past few years.

There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life.

And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public.

But the Guide, as has been pointed out many times, is wildly innacurate. And also, since all versions of the Guide were shut down over the sub-etha net when Megadodo Publications was bought out by Infinidim Enterprises (which was just a front for the Vogons), there is no way for the Guide to ever be updated again.

If the Guide ever were updated, it would go on to explain the only time Veet Voojagig ever was released from his tax exile. It was on July 24, 2011.

* * *

Altdenwizrusk is a planet nestled deep in the west-north-west end of the Crab Nebula. As well as its highly inexpensive tax rate, it is also known for its long history of neutraility in almost all subjects, claiming that it would just like to stay home and read for a little while. Studded with jagged snow-covered mountains, freezing-cold air and thick-walled inns, it is a world where one can retreat too and feel totally relaxed that the police will never find them there. 

A tall spire of the great Gaöl Defs Cathedral of Apehd Mu cast a long shadow over the inverse-dome shaped roof of the Tarlnaäyge Inn.

Inside this inn, in the hotel restaurant, Nal Freetayrte-zeejz (roughly translated, The Deep-Fried Goat), there was a long bar covering the south wall. On one of the barstools sat a man whose pointed ears and green eyes, placed firmly on his pointed face behind a thin, sharp nose gave the man a distinctly cat-like appearance.

A long, dirty hand reached up over the bar and its long, crooked fingernails curled around a glass of ice-cold liquor, a draught made by a substance found deep in the mines of Freon (which could be found just north of the town that the Tarlnaäyge was in) that was known to dull the senses and inspire a zen-like feeling of numbness. This substance had, supposedly, earned the drink its name: Freon Zen Swig. But long ago, the owner of the hand with the curled fingernails had determined why Freon Zen Swig was actually called what it was. It had earned its name from the secret ingredient in it. Freon Zen Swig was a clever anagram of "Freezing Snow."

Veet Voojagig clutched his bottle of Zen Swig in his bony, long-fingernailed hands. He shook his head back and forth and took another freezing sip (though, on a planet like Altdenwizrusk, everything was freezing).

A blast of cold air and snow flooded the room as the door was thrust open.

It was quickly stopped by the door loudly being shut.

A low crunch of thick leather boots against the stiff carpet.

"Veet Voojagig."

The cat-like man slowly turned his head around.

There were policemen standing next to him.

Veet inhaled deeply and let out a low, "What the hell do you want?"

"We're from Galactic Police," said one of the officers. "We've been sent to retrieve you and bring you to Damogran."

Damogran was a planet that Veet knew well, having been there while the judge had decided what form of tax exile he would go to.

"What?" grunted Veet. "You wanna arrest me again? God, I already told you guys, I wouldn't waste that much time on a lie!"

"It's not that," said the cop. "You're supposed to be a character witness at Zaphod Beeblebrox's trial."

Veet bliked.

"Zaphod Beeblebrox's trial?"

* * *

Zaphod slumped down on the bench again, waiting for the visitor to come. He didn't know who it was. 

Until the door at the far end "opened" and the visitor walked in.

Two of Zaphod's eyes lit up. Then he knocked his second head against his first one and nodded to the door. Two more of Zaphod's eyes lit up.

The visitor hopped over to the bench and in an almost dance, snatched up the phone, tossed it into the air and caught it with the other hand.

"Zaphod! How ya doing?"

"Veet!"

"Hey!"

"Veet, you hoopy frood! What're you doing here!"

"I'm a characters witness! I just got the call!"

"So you'll be here as long as I will?"

"Yeah! Oh, man, it's great to see you again! You don't know how _cold_ it was out there!"

"Oh, I can imagine, man! Wow—how are you doing?"

"I'm doing great! I'm warming up!"

"Great to see you, buddy!"

"Right back at you."

"Well, I haven't seen you since that biro fiasco."

"Doubting bastards."

"No, that was a pretty depressing afterparty, wasn't it?"

"Meh. I've had worse. Well, really, enough about me—what about you? I mean, jail? Again?"

"Yeah, man. I'll get to that in a second. But first, guess what I did after I left U of M."

"What?"

"I was _president_."

"President?"

"Yeah! Galactic Imperial Government! Of the whole galaxy! Ask anyone!"

"Man! How the hell'dya do that?"

"I dunno, I just ran and I won! I guess people like me!"

"Well, I'm not surprised! But really—President Zaphod Beeblebrox?"

"Yeah!"

"What'd ya do as president?"

"Um…run that by me again?"

"What—did—you—do—as—president?"

"Well, you know, I…uh…well, I spent most of it in prison or at parties…"

"Did you do any work?"

"Well, I signed a few forms, gave a few speeches…nothing terribly new."

"Well, really, man, what'd you do to get here?"

"Hey, hey, man—come on, you know me. My motto is 'If it's fun, do it.' Don't be surprised I got arrested."

"Yeah, but this is Damogranian-league stuff! You had to have done something big."

"Well, I'll tell you what I did Veet."

"Tell me what you did."

"I stole a ship I was meant to launch at its launching ceremony."

"You _what_?"

"Well, this voice in the back of my head kept telling me to! I couldn't resist!"

"How nice was it?"

"It was an Infinite Improbability Drive ship."

"_Infinite_ Improbability Drive?"

"You got it."

"They found out how to do that?"

"Impeccably so."

"Wow! I have been really out of it!"

"Yeah."

"I can only remember the FID's."

"Ah, yes…the old Vector Plotter models."

"Great for breaking the ice at parties."

"None better."

"But tell me, why did you steal it?"

"I mean, at first, I thought it was just 'cause I thought it was cool, but then I found out why I really stole it."

"Why?"

"Long ago, a few years before the election, me, my great-grand-dad, some guy from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy publishing company, President Yooden Vrax, and a guy named Rooster or something, formed a plan to meet the one who ruled the Universe. I stole the ship, we used it to find the guy, and we had a drink with him."

"Cool. What's he like?"

"He's a pretty weird guy."

"Hm."

"Good whisky, though."

"He's an alcoholic?"

"That he is."

"Well, the Universe is in good hands, then."

"Great to see you again, Veet."


	12. Halfrunt's Discovery

Author's Notes: Whilst I am afraid I cannot offer any apology for my longabsence, I can admit that I made a grevious error in calculating the time between the end of _Mostly Harmless_ and the beginning of this story. It's probably more like 15 years that 9…

**

* * *

July 27, 2011 **

**Witness Holding Center, Damogran**

Even though Gag Halfrunt had slipped away from the police's watch (knowing that all means of transportation off the planet were scrutinized to the teeth, so the police wouldn't bother looking for him until he had to be found, since he couldn't be very far), he had still managed to con his way into getting a room at the WHC under the false identity of someone named Lauk Hekkim-Snrub.

At the precise moment in question, he was trying to figure out if he could thought-seal the plastic door on the vending machine next to the Non-Teleportational Meachanical Matter Movers (the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation had long since collapsed under the pressure of bankruptcy, multiple lawsuits, executives being thrown in jail left and right, all SCC products the police could locate were recalled and replaced with items from a company called the **T**ectologic **E**lectronological, **R**adiological and **R**obotical **I**nstitute of the **B**rotherhood of **L**ibrian **E**ngineers, often shortened to **TERRIBLE**. The NTMM's were a product of TERRIBLE).

Anyway, as was being said, Gag Halfrunt was at the vending machine, concentrating on the plastic slot, when he was interrupted by a voice behind him.

"Um…excuse me?"

Halfrunt glaced up.

The man before him was strange. Somewhere in his early forties, the man had olive green eyes, ochre hair, and, as Halfrunt could tell from years of being a psychiastrist, the mental state of being dominated by a mix of bewilderment and quick-thinking. He was dressed in a leather-like jacket plaster plates over the shoulders and sleeves made out of eel hide. He clearly did not know what he was wearing, and had no doubt purchased it from a street vendor in Chara. His eyes had the look of someone who had been told everything anyone could ever wish to know but understood none of it.

Halfrunt hadn't actually turned around to see the man, but rather looked at his reflection in his sunglasses. Dim as they were, he was an expert, and had already assesed more about him than a civilian, as brain specialists called them, could know about him after spending a decade with him.

Halfrunt, who felt like he remembered the man from somewhere, decided to turn around to face him.

"Do you know if there's anywhere I can get ice around here?" asked the man.

"Ice? Where do you think you are, Vega? Well, you're on Damogran, the hottest, most ice-less planet in the north-eastern spiral arm. Get a Vilact chart, Christopher Columbus."

Halfrunt hadn't actually said _Christopher Columbus_, but you know what he means.

"Sorry," said the man. "It's just I've been to so many hotels, I can never be sure if there'll be an ice dispenser…"

Something in Halfrunt's mind snapped. He actually just stopped himself from gasping out loud.

He shoved his hand into his jacket and pulled out his wallet. In it was a photo, a still from one of the security cameras on a Vogon ship in the Outlying Western Construction Brigade. In the image were three beings: one, a large young Vogon guard escorting the other two beings, two, a thin red-haired man in an oversized brown suit-jacket and sweater vest, and three, a tired-looking man in a burgundy bath robe shouting something angrily to the man in the jacket.

Gag now recognized the man before him as the third man in the picture.

"You're from Earth," breathed Halfrunt.

"Um…yes…is that a problem?" asked the man.

"No…no…Earth was destroyed, wasn't it?"

"Yes. It was."

"Yes, yes…ghastly business, that…I've got to go…"

Halfrunt lept past the human and sprinted to his room.

* * *

"You know, this whole thing kinda sprung up on me pretty quickly, Zafe…" 

"Hey, you're not the one who was two yards away from a bus that'd make me about a spiral arms' lenght away from those cops at light-speed."

"Yeah, yeah, but really…what are we gonna do? We have to think of a defence."

"You know, I've been thinking…insanity might not be that bad of idea."

"Huh?"

"I have two heads…the jurors won't be Betelgeusian, they won't know what it's like to have two heads…yeah, I can see it now…I'll go on about how it's psycological torment, never knowing what to think, always disagreeing with myself…it's enough to drive a guy insane…insane enough to steal the _Heart of Gold_!"

"Wow…that's a really good idea! Add in the pressure of being President of the Galaxy, and we've got a nervous breakdown on our hands…you never cease to please, Beeblebrox."

"Hey…what if we can cut a deal with Gag? He can go on about how he could tell I was insane from the start, but there was nothing he could do!"

"Zaphod, my friend, we might win this case yet!"

"You really think so?"

"Eeh…I've worked miracles before."

"Miracles?"

"Well, I opened that jar of purpickles you seemed to find so agrivating."

"Hey, if someone with three arms can't open a jar of salty vegetabatallion banana-wannabe's, something is wrong."

* * *

"_Amalgamated Union of Psychologists, Psychiatrists and Psycotherapists."_

"Curt Dosenifeg, please," spat Halfrunt quickly.

"_One moment, please."_

A moment later, a second sheep-like voice answered, _"This is Dosenifeg."_

"Curt, it's Gag."

"_Gag? You never call here…what's going on?"_

"I just discovered how to secure us our jobs for life!"

"_What?"_

"The Earthling! The human!"

"Gag, what are you talking about?"

"Remember, I told you about it years ago! I had the Earth destroyed because it was calculating the Ultimate Question! To Life, the Universe and Everything!"  
_  
"I know, I know! We all do! You told us all about it. So the planet was destroyed, what's the problem?"_

"I—al—rea—dy—told—you!" hissed an extremely annoyed Gag Halfrunt. "There are still two humans still alive!"

"_Oh…right…I can see how that would complicate things…but I already know that. Why did you call me?"_

"Because I FOUND one of them!"  
_  
"One of the Earthlings?"_

"Yes! Which means the other one can't be far away!"

"_So, what do we do?"  
_  
"The only thing we can do: vanquish the question once and for all.

Halfrunt's voice dropped lower…colder.

"We," he said into the reciever, in a snake-like hiss, "are going to _kill_ the humans. At any cost."

"_How soon do you need us?"_

"As soon as possible, Curt," said Gag Halfrunt. "As soon as possible."


	13. Judge, Jury and Executioner—1 of 3

Disclaimer: Just thought I'd remind you…case you forgot…HHGTTG…not mine.

* * *

"Hehe, that oughta keep em'," muttered Zaphod happily as he gripped the bottom of the stall door and slipped under without unlocking it. 

After he got himself up, a man wearing a cybernetic exoskeleton walked by him, walked up to the stall he had just locked, touched the handle with his index finger, and immediatley shorted the lock out. The door swung open. Zaphod saw this just as he walked out the door.

"God damnit," he mumbled to himself just as a man in a black robe walked by him. The man stopped and turned around.

"Excuse me?" he said loudly.

"Oh, yeah, the con swore," said Zaphod, barely turning around. "Biggest shock since Titanic."

"Did I see you leaving that stall without unlocking the door?" asked the man in black.

"Not unless you're blind," said Zaphod.

"You'd probably want to refrain from childry if you're awaiting court."

"You think I'm going to take advice from someone who wears black after Harbour Day?"

"Harbour Day's not for thirteen months."

"Well, if you accept the theory proposed by elementary time travel that spacetime is not a continuum but a single universe, with each moment of time seperated into dimensions by walls and that a time machine can break through this wall to not go to a different point in time but actually go to a different location in spacetime—then Harbour Day's happening right now as we speak, in another dimension."

"Do you you have any idea what you're talking about?" asked the man.

"I don't know…do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

"What do you mean, you don't know? Do you or don't you?"

"I don't know…do I?"

"Do you?"

"Who wants to know?"

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"What do you mean, 'what do you mean?'"

"What's two plus two?"

"What?"

"I've got nothing…"

"Got nothing?"

"I was seeing how long we could go answering questions with questions. It was fun, let's do it again some time."

"Let's not."

"Good idea."

"I don't think you don't know who I am."

"I bet you don't think you don't."

"I think you're right."

"I bet you think I'm right that you don't think I don't."

"You do?"

"I might. Do I?"

"How should I know?"

"Well played."

"Who am I?"

"A guy?"

"No. Well, yes."

"Yeah, I'm psychic like that."

"What am I thinking right now, then?"

"You're wondering what I'm going to say."

"In more way than one."

"How do you mean?"

"You're Zaphod Beeblebrox, aren't you?"

"I might be."

"You are."

"You know more about me than me!" cried Zaphod. "And you've never even met me. It must be vice versa. Let's see…you are…"

"…very annoyed," finished the man.

"I'm almost there…um…Jenx Malamyan."

"You just made up that name."

"Well, psycokinesis is harder than it looks. But you didn't seem to have any problem identifying me."

"That's because it's going to be my job during your run in court for me to know all about you. I have, of course, found out what you look like by now."

"Cool, cool…so, as a point of interest, who are you, anyway?"

"My name is Judiciary Terin Terenax."

"Terenax? As in, Loonquawl Terenax? One of the mice that got the meaning of life from that computer? What was it called? Deep Throat?"

"What? No, I've never heard of anyone named Loonquawl."

"Right, none of us ever really got to spread the word about that whole thing…well, anyway, I give up. You can come out now."

"Come out of where?"

"Oh, I forgot what game we were playing."

"Game?"

"You got it. Who are you again?"

"Believe it or not, Mr. Beeblebrox, I am the judge who will be presiding over _your_ trial."

"What a coincidence! I'm the Zaphod Beeblebrox who'll be Zaphod Beeblebrox at my trial!"

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to my courtroom to select the jury pool for our upcoming trial. I big you goodday, and look forward to what you have to say in your defence."

Judiciary Terenax turned around and began walking down the hall and into an elevator. Just before the lift door closed, Zaphod called across the hall to him, "Well, it'll be 'not guilty'!"


	14. Change of Heart

"...as the galaxy waits in anticipation for the upcoming Zaphod Beeblebrox trial, scheduled to officially begin tomorrow..."

* * *

The greatest asset the Amalgamated Union of Psycologists, Psychiatrists and Psycotherapists (AUPPP) is its immense size. Using its size, it has spread throughout the galaxy, getting jobs in as many institutions, associations, corporations, agencies, etc., as it can, slowly rising in power through promotion after promotion, gaining great influence in complete secrecy. After all the scores upon scores of members have rooted their power into as many organizations as possible, they are able to more or less aquire any possible item that the process of eliminating everything in every dimension that threatens to put psycologists out of work would call for. 

Within little more than 6 hours ('hour', in this instance, refering to the unit of time measure used primarily in +nzα, or Plural N-through-Z Alpha, star systems), Gag Halfrunt had used the influence of Awwppp to have one of Gag's fellow upper-echelon Union members, a psychiatrist named Aerthulio that worked in Disaster Area's record company, to secure Halfrunt one of the pitch-black sundive ships used in DA's concerts. Halfrunt was then able to regulate the transport of his friend Curt Desenofig to Damogran in the middle of the night. The ship was not detected at all, as the voyage was done in the dead of night, rendering the ship invisible.

Now is probably the time when I should inform you that the way I have obtained such detailed knowledge of the events you have read in chapters one-through-thirteen, as well as all forthcoming chapters, is a deadly secret that I shall carry with me to the grave (or, as circumstances would have it, already have). But while you will not know how I know the score, I will be able to tell you that my method failed slightly over the following while, and so I will not be able to tell you the exact way that Gag Halfrunt managed to smuggle Curt Desenofig into the WHC, or how Halfrunt went on to secretly hypnotise Ford Prefect into becoming an integral part in his plot to kill Arthur Dent, albeit unconsciously integral.

* * *

"The trial's tomorrow…"  
"I know that."  
"I already switched from prosecution to defence."  
"I'm not surprised."  
"Well, he is my brother…or cousin…somewhere in between."  
"Yes. Of course. Family."  
"Are you going to?"  
"Going to what?"  
"Are you going to switch to defence?"  
"Why would I switch to defence?"  
"Why wouldn't you?"  
"Maybe because I hate him?"  
"Why do you hate Zaphod?"  
"Maybe because I've known him for about 15 years, and all the time I've known him, all he's done for me is make fun of me, insult my race and my intelligence, do incredibly stupid things that almost got me killed, and never once has he shown a thread of remorse?"  
"Arthur, how can you forget that he saved your life, too?"  
"Alright, I'm going to stop playing 'Questions Only' now. When did he save my life?"  
"Well, you would've died if Zafe hadn't activated the Improbability Drive right when he fell out of the airlock."  
"Yes…"  
"And if he hadn't come to Magrathea without trying to cover his tracks, those mice that were trying to kill you would've suceeded if the Galactic Police hadn't shown up and distracted them."  
"Yeah…"  
"And, this may be a stretch, but you wouldn't have been able to get off Disaster Area's stunt ship if he hadn't figured out how the teleport system worked."  
"Well…"  
"And, most of all, it was my adventures with Zaphod when we were kids, sneaking into ship yards and pretending we were pirates, that made me decide that there'd be a lot more opportunities to do things just like that if I got a job for the _Guide_, which in turn aloud me to come to Earth and save you!"  
"But…"  
"Face it, Arthur! Even if Zaphod might be a little contemptuous with those less evolved than his race, but he's a good guy, and you owe him this!"  
"I don't know…"  
"What's to know? There's still time!"  
"How would one go about switching from prosecution to defence?"  
"Check the letter informing you about your side. It's not paper, it's very soft sheet metal. There's a switch on the other side. Press that, and you'll be able to switch."  
"Um…alright."  
Arthur did just this. After he pressed the switch, the WHC room disappeared and Arthur found himself in a pitch black room, the only light coming from a screen in front of him, probably on a wall, but he couldn't tell—all the light from the screen illuminated was some of himself and the screen itslelf.  
On the screen was the face of a man with an indescribable face. Not exactly unhumanoid, but seeming angry and joyful at the same time. He looked at the screen from a room similar to that of the rangers on the radio in _The Shining_.  
"Yes? Hello? Who are you?"  
"Um…Arthur Dent."  
The man looked down and a tapping was heard, like he was typing on a keyboard under the screen.  
"Ah, yes, Arthur Dent…in the Zaphod Beeblebrox trial. You're prosecuting. What do you want?"  
"Well, I want to…switch sides."  
"You do? Switch to defence? Why do you want to do that?"  
"Well…I was assinged prosecution…I thought it was right…I didn't know…I can't go through with this…I just can't…he is…my…friend."  
"You'd like to switch? Alright. But, ooo…this is pretty late in Triple P (Pre Pending Prosecution)."  
"Just do this for me!"  
"Alright, but you'll have to testify last."  
"That's alright! Just get me on the defence!"  
"What do you smell like?"  
"Excuse me?"  
"There's something familiar about you…it reminds me of something, I don't know what…what do you smell like?"  
"Er…I don't know."  
"Hang on."  
The man looked down again and typed something.  
"Ah…alas…not rotting cabbage."  
"Why would I smell like rotting cabbage?"  
"There's a certain type of person that I'm almost sure you remind me of…in some way…I thought it might be smell."  
"Alright…well…can I go?"  
"Yes, yes, get your sleep…"  
The man typed something again. Arthur felt his chromosones begin to shift and seep out of the room.  
"Wait a minute!" shouted the man. "I've got it! I know what type of person you remind me of now!"  
"You do?"  
"It's your name! The spelling's not exact, but the pronunciation is the same!"  
"What about my name?"  
And just before Arthur teleported from wherever he was, he heard the man shout, "Your name is Galactispeke for the word _hitchhiker_!" 


	15. Opening Statements

**August 1, 2011**

**GFLEC Court Room #4****Δ****6Z2ſ9ΠX4Þ2Z**

"All rise," said the bailiff, "for his Fairly High Judgmental Supremacy, Judiciary Terin Terenax, LIMR." 

Terin Terenax was only Learned, Impartial and Moderatley Relaxed.

The audience—if that's the right word—slowly hunched themselves up, most of their hands resting on the back of the chair in front of them.

A man in a long, black robe stroad across the room and sat himself on the judge's bench. He flicked a switch on a control panel on his desk. A small screen rose from the desk in front of the control panel, spewing out pointless jargon about various uninteresting subjects.

Terin Terenax banged his hypergavel.

"All lower," said Terenax.

The spectators—if that's the right word—sat down much quicker than they had stood up. This confused only one man in the courtroom.

"The trial of The People And, To A Lesser Extent, Hotblack Desiato vs. Zaphod Beeblebrox is now in session. Mr. Beeblebrox, Mr. Salmenta, as you know, this proceeding is an investigation into the legality and/or reality of actions proposed by members of the public to violate civil or criminal law—thus, in a rare case, this trial will both be a civil and a criminal one."

_Yes, two in one!_ thought Zaphod. He turned around. Him and Ford gave each other what looked like peace signs.

"Mr. Beeblebrox, hereafter refered to as 'the defendant', stands accused of the following: three counts of grand theft lacunav—"

Arthur turned to Ford. "Spaceship stealing," explained Ford before Arthur could ask.

"—possesion of fraudulent indentification cards, and possesion, or at least former possesion, of an estimated 2016 dollars worth of stolen goods accumulated over the last 10 years. These are the criminal offenses. The civil offenses allegedly perpetrated by the defendant are, a total of 95 unpaid parking tickets on the planets Sidus, Inferne, Coniecto, Adjungo, Silva, Argentum and Gravis, charging 10 septillion dollars to the checking account of Mr. Hotblack Desiato, and fraternizing when persons you were aware were criminals, which violated your parole of your previous arrest some 160 years ago for holding up an Arcuturian megafreighter in sector X7-B Single B Gamma."

"Erm—yeah, about that," interjected Aile Salmenta. "I'd appreciate it if we make no reference to any crimes my client was convicted for in the past for the duration of this trial, and only the alleged crimes he is on trial for currently is discussed."

"Fair enough," said Terenax. "No reference will be made to any crimes in the defendant's past."

"Ha!" shouted Aile. "If you can't refer to any crimes in my client's past, then you can't refer to any of the crimes he's under trial for right now, because since he's not commiting any of these crimes right now, all those crimes are in his past! So the trial is over!"

The audience—if that's the right word—gasped. Could he do that?

"You…don't honestly believe that you're correct in assuming that that worked, do you?" asked Terenax.

Aile looked uncomfortable for a moment. He tried shifting his stance on his feet. Zaphod slapped his face with his hands.

"N-no…n…no, n-no…of cour-no," murmured Aile. "Um…no, of course I…er…didn't."

"All right, now that that's settled…I shall now open the floor for opening statements. Mr Sectrol Attorney, you may proceed."

The Interspatial equivalent of a District Attorney stepped forward from the desk across the aisle from Aile and Zaphod.

His face was squat yet large head , his ears were long and appeared to be pointed back at the tips. He had a long mouth and a large nose, and the large indent around his eyes made his actual eyes looked small and tired. His face also appeared to be round and square shaped at the same time. With a jutting out muzzle, thick creases running down from his nose to the ends of his mouth, and a thick forehead, he almost looked like some manner of primate. His expression was confusing, friendly yet almost sad, as if unhappy that he was happy. When he spoke, his voice was stark yet soft.

"Thank you, Judiciary Terenax," said the Sectoral Attorney. "Members of the jury…"

"What was that?" whispered Aile to Zaphod. "He didn't even say 'distinguisghed' members."

"Aile…" started Zaphod.

"How rude of him."

"Um...look..."

"I sure won't make that mistake."

Zafe gave up. "I'm sure you won't."

"…what I," continued the SA, "intend to prove is that Mr. Beeblebrox—"

"_The defendant_," corrected Terenax.

"—the defendant," reiterated the SA, "is a wanton criminal who commits crimes with no regard to ethics or the wellbeing of others, and who believes that he can pratice any manner of actions that he pleases without thinking of the consequences. I have video, I have audio, I have witnesses, I have fingerprints and signatures and I have any kind of evidence I need to show to prove to you and the members of the jury that—er—the defendant—is not fit to continue existing in free society, and that he must be sent to jail for as long as it takes for him to realize the consequences of his actions."

A long silence fell over the courtroom.

"I see," said Terenax. "You sound very prepared."

"Oh, you'd better believe it," said the SA, patting his suitcase, which was actually full of money.

"Don't tell me what to do. Mr. Salmenta," said Terenax, turning to his right. "An opening statement?"

"Oh, damn, I hate public speaking…" said Aile to himself.

"What else does a lawyer do?" muttered Zaphod.

"I became a lawyer 'cause I'm good at paperwork," said Aile quickly and quietly. "I just evo into the piece of paper I'm working on with all the information filled in, then I photocopy myself, so I have the paper I want in about 15 seconds."

"Wow, cool," said Zaphod. "I may have to look into getting chromosone reduction surgery."

Aile turned to Terenax and the jury box.

"Well…distinguished members of the jury—"

"How long have you had your head in the black holes?" said Zaphod quietly. "The jurors aren't distinguished, they're just civilians who got jury duty."

"Oh…I see," said Aile. "Um…indistinguished members of the jury…"

Zaphod slapped his hand against his face.

"…the defense…i.e., me and, uh, the defendant…intend to prove that, even though my client _did_ commit the crimes, he shouldn't be prosecuted for any of them."

"The trial that he's undergoing right this moment _is_ his prosecution," said Terenax.

"Oh…right…I meant 'persecuted'. He shouldn't be _persecuted_ for any of them."

Aile turned to the court scribe, who was typing very quickly on a keybord and mumbling under her breath into a speakwrite headset.

"Can you strike this and the previous three sentences from the record, and replace 'prosecuted' with 'persecuted' in the sentence four sentences ago?"

"She's not aloud to talk during a proceeding. Let me explain," said Terenax. "Each court scribe is put in a kind of invisible reverse sound wave slo-time envelope, so they—and only they—can hear sound waves before they're created, and hear what someone says before it's actually said, so they can type it out quicker and save a lot of time, but it doesn't give them a heart attack from shock hearing sound that doesn't exist yet because they're too busy looking at the monitor to see what they're typing to see if the person has said something or not, so even though they know no one's said it, they still can't be sure, so they remain sane.  
"But if they tried saying something themselves, they'd know that no one had said it because it was something they were about to say themselves, and they'd be so shocked at hearing them say something they'd never actually said yet that they'd forget to say it, and the sound waves would have to disappear because since the scribe didn't say anything, the waves never existed and thus automatically disappear. But due to the law of transference, there is a vacuum of completly empty space created in the area where the sound waves disappeared. And since a space of area with absolutley nothing in it cannot exist, even an empty space the size of an electron that's empty for a quadrillionth of a second, a paradox vortex is created that destroys the entire universe instantaneously."

"So, you automatically receive the ability to destroy creation as it is in all concievable dimsensions, universes and planes of existence when you become a court scribe?" asked Aile Salmenta.

"More or less, yes," said Terenax.

"Well…I hope you don't appoint any court scribe who doesn't like their life."

"Yes, so do we."

"You should have a pretty good screening process."

"We do."

"So, any chance," asked Aile Salmenta, "of my remarks being striked and having 'prosecuted' replaced with 'persucted'?"

"No, none at all," said Judiciary Terenax. "No comments can be struck from the record until the first piece of evidence has been presented."

"I see," said Aile.

"Any chance," asked Zaphod nonchalantly, "of the scribe over there coming out of the shock from learning that she has the power to destroy the universe by any action that verbally creates sound waves?"

Terenax glanced over at the scribe. She was frozen in place, her eyes wide open in an expression of horror.

"Oh, that happens all the time," said Terenax. He flicked a switch on the control panel. The scribe snapped out of it and began typing and mumbling even quicker than before.

"Well, anyway," said Aile. "The defendant may have commited these crimes, but he shouldn't be _punished_. This argument thus makes all of the Sectoral Attorney's evidence over there, completley useless."

The SA's face fell.

"Aww…damnit," he muttered.

"Then again," said Salmenta, "we might switch are argument if we see fit. Me and the defendant will just have all our previous comments striked from the record."

"Is that the end of your statement?"

"Well, I wasn't planning on it, but now that you mention it, I can't think of much else to say. Sure, it's the end."

"All right. There will be a two minute break for the two sides to prepare."

Aile sat down and turned to his client.

"I don't think that'll work," said Zaphod under his breath.

"Relax," whispered Aile. "I've found smaller loopholes than this. Trust me."

"Hey, I only trust low-celled organisms that don't know they themselves exist. If you can train one to talk, you can have fun arguing for hours. You always win, because they don't know that anyone's on their side."

"Sounds fun. Now let's get to work."

"Right," said Zaphod. "One second."

Zaphod turned to the scribe.

"Hey, typeface!" he called.

The scribe glanced up just as Zaphod began the sectence, naturally having heard it beforehand. She looked as if she was about to say something in response, then she caught herself and looked so shocked that she almost fainted.

"Oh, that's great…" murmured Zaphod to himself, laughing. "All right, who's the first witness?"

"Uh…let's see…"

Aile took out a small LCD screen and began scrolling through information.

"It was supposed to be that monkey guy, but he's been switched…I think it's Gag."

"Halfrunt? That quack? Oh, god… 'Oh, why don't we just slap a _Ph.D _on the end of the name of a guy who can't tell a cerebellum from a cerebrum and call him a brain-care specialist?' I am _not_ looking forward to this."

* * *

Author's Notes: And neither am I. I know absolutley nothing about court precedures. Then again, it's outer space. I'll just make up what happens. 


	16. Gag's Testimony

**August 1, 2011  
****  
GFLEC Court Room #4Δ6Z2ſ9ΠX4Þ2Z**

"Mr Sectoral Attorney, you may begin."

"Thank you, your honour," said the SA. "The prosecution calls upon Mr Gagla Halfrunt."

The large oak doors swung open and in strode Halfrunt, looking more content then ever. He stopped himself from summersaulting over to the bench. He took a seat and spun around in his chair.

The bailiff walked up to Gag with a non-descript and featureless grey book in his hand.

"Nebula or cosmos?" asked the bailiff.

"First," said Gag with a smile.

"Which nebula?"

"Owl Nebula, 3587."

"Planet?"

"Mentasia."

"Country?"

"Sagiatus."

"Religion?"

"Procredism."

* * *

Arthur Dent, who was sitting in the back row with Ford Prefect, began thinking. _Cities are planets, countries are nebulas, continents are galaxies, planets are universes_...

* * *

At the mention of the word 'Procredism', the grey book immediatley transformed into an ornatley decorated old leather-bound book with glimmering gold letters on the cover, reading what looked like "ΓΣΘζΣΞΔΨکŊ" in an ancient alien tongue. 

"Place your hand on this Cretazia and repeat after me," said the bailiff.

Halfrunt slapped his hand on the cover of the book.

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me…um…how is it pronounced? Loo-naiss?"

"Loo-naijze," corrected Gag.

"Right. Um…so help me Liunaiqse," said the bailiff, speaking the name of the Procedismic god. He had to change the name of the deity he says the name of every time a witness with a new religion comes up.

"I swear to tell nothing but the whole truth so help me Liunaiqse," said Gag, speeding things up.

"Great," said the bailiff.

The SA stood up and walked over to Gag Halfrunt.

"Mr Halfrunt," said the SA. "Describe your relation with the defendant."

"I'm his private brain-care specialist."

"You're his psycologist?"

"In a way."

"How did you meet the defendant?"

"It was during his first election campaign, before the term where he stole the ship."

"Objection!" cried Aile Salmenta. "The Sectoral Attorney did not ask about the Heart of Gold!"

"I wasn't talking about the Heart of Gold," said Gag cooly. "I was talking about the ship he stole from Disaster Area and Milliway's. Unless I'm not mistaken, you just admitted that your client stole the Heart of Gold."

"Damnit!" muttered Aile.

Zaphod tried to slap him when he sat down. Aile hadevolved into a bowl of gellatin.

"Sustained," said Terenax. "This proceding will analyze each crime one by one, and we are currently on the theft of the Heart of—"

"Alleged theft!"

"Thank you, Mr Salmenta. _Alleged_ theft of the Heart of Gold. But Mr Salmenta, please, quiet down."

"Objection!" shouted Aile.

"What now, Mr Salmenta?"

"The defence wasn't aware that we were going crime by crime!"

"Neither was the prosecution," said Terenax. "And anyway, due to the crime one-by-one process during this trial, I sustained your objection when Mr Halfrunt refered to another charge. And now, you're objecting to the one-by-one process? Your objecting to the substainance of your previous objection?"

"Well, when you put it like that," said Aile, "I guess not."

"Anyway," continued Gag. "It was during his first campaign for president. He visited my mansion to try to garner the vote of Vilact's psycologists. He then mentioned in passing that his previous brain-caretaker had accidentally fell out of a ninety-story window, but not before saying that I was the best therapist in the business, so he asked me if I could take up the position. I, of course, said yes."

"Interesting, interesting. How long have you known Mr Beeblebrox?"

Gag Halfrunt frowned, in a rare case. "I just told you. I've known him since his first presidential campaign, so 26 years."

"What kind of years?"

"New Standard Imperial System years."

"So, 400 days per year, times…26 years…hmm…twenty eight…carry the two…um…"

"It's 10,400," said Gag. "Honestly, Mr Sectoral Attorney, didn't you go to school?"

"Well, I went to law school."

"Really? I mean, can math be any simpler than 26 times 400?"

"Of course it can!" said the SA annoyedly. "What's 1 plus 1?"

"Okay, now you're getting into fractions," said Gag Halfrunt.

_

* * *

Fractions are algebra, digits are fractions, tens are digits, hundreds are tens… _

* * *

"During your 26 years with the defendant, what kind of things did you observe about his state of mind while you were reviewing...um...him?" 

"Oh, he's a nut job. Completley insane. Lock him up and melt the key down into some kind of crowbar, then take that and whack him on the heads with it until he's sane."

"Um…are you sure he's insane? Because, you know, if he _was_ insane, he could just get off on the insanity plea, like his lawyer said he'd do."

Gag froze.

_Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! How could I miss the opening statements? Why did I come in late? Why did I escape from those cops at the landing pad? I bet that jerk didn't even film the Ruler of the Universe, he probably just stole my ReCordEr_...

"Well?" said the SA. "Were you telling the truth when you said he was insane?"

"Yes, Mr. Halfrunt," said Aile, standing up, trying to keep a straight face. "Were you telling the truth fifteen seconds ago? I mean, you didn't _lie_ under oath, did you? You'd go to jail for that, wouldn't you?"

Gag's lips curled into a smile. Inside, he was actually horrified.

"No, of course not…I didn't lie…he's very insane…unstable…the insanity plea won't stand up. He's too reckless! He's still insane! I know, I was his shrink! Lock him up in a mental assylum or he'll go on another stealing rampage! There's dangerous stuff in those brains of his! Deep dark stuff! He's a criminal."

"So, he's unstable?" said the SA.

"Oh, yeah. Majorly unstable. Can't be trusted. He's insane. Insane, insane, insane. In fact, it's almost too hard too look him in the eyes, I just remember the fear that I suffered every day when I cared for his brain. That's what I did. I was his brain-care specialist."

* * *

Ford Prefect squeezed his eyes shut and kind of stuck his head forward. He breathed slowly. His throat ached.

* * *

"Well, Mr Halfrunt," said the SA, "would you say he's _criminally_ insane?" 

"Well, I wouldn't—"

"Objection!" shouted Aile. "Statements in testimonies are to be conveyed solely by the witness, and not suggested by the examiner!"

"Sustained," said Terenax. "Scribe, strike Mr Distric Attorney's last comment from the record. Mr District Attorney, cut it out."

"I have a name, you know," said the SA.

* * *

Ford rubbed his eyes. 

"Eeu…you got a tissue, Arthur?"

"What? Oh, yes, sure…"

He reached into a pocket on the side of his shirt and handed Ford a tissue.

"Thanks…oh, I think I have comatina…"

"Comatina?"

"Space flu. Wait 30 years, it'll wipe out a fifth of Earth."

He sneezed into the tissue. His mucus was black, which wasn't its normal colour.

"Thanks," murmured Ford. The skin around his eyes was turning red. He sneezed again. Some of the particles of the mucus from Ford's sneeze were inhaled by Arthur.

* * *

"You _don't_ think the insanity plea could hold up?" asked the SA.  
_  
Let's see how I can word this so I don't contradict myself_, thought Gag Halfrunt. 

"Well, no, I don't. He was insane enough to commit those…yunnow, stealings. Of that ship on Damogr—ooh, right, I'm not supposed to know about Damogram."

"You're _on_ Damogram right now," said Terenax with a groan. "I grant you the right to know it exists."

"Oh. Yes. Well. He stole that ship, about, 40 kilometres away from here. Because he was crazy! I saw it coming! I saw it in his brain! Evil thoughts! Evil plots! Evil thefts! Evil knots!"

"Evil knots?" said the SA, fearing he was losing the argument.

"Well, I couldn't think of another rhyme," said Gag. "But there were thoughts! And plots! And evil! I saw it coming!"

"Then why didn't you tell anyone about it?" asked the SA.

"Because he said he'd kill me!" shrieked Gag.

"Objection! That's a hearsarical lie!" shouted Aile.

"You can't object to a lie unless its against conduct, even if it _is_ a lie, which it may not be," said Terenax. "But anyway, bailiff?"

The bailiff withdrew, and injected Gag with, a small bright green needle full of sodium bensulphite.

"Aaaah!" moaned Agag quietly. "Why is it always in the shoulder!"

* * *

Arthur noticed the colour of the serum in the needle. He knew it must serve some kind of just purpose, because he suddenly remembered some advice he had heard in a canteen around Sirius a few years back. 

_That's how ya know if a liquid's safe to put in ya_._ The brighter it is, the better it is_. _S'at's why Janx is clear_._ White, good, clear, perfect_.

* * *

The bailiff took a step back. 

"There. Truth serum," said the SA. "Now—did Mr Beeblebr—er, the defendant—threaten to kill you?"

Gag mentally caused one of his veins to attach itself to his intestine, causing the serum to flow into his stomach acid and become useless.

"Yes, he most certainley did!" cried Gag. "He said he'd smash my head in with a bottle of liquer!"

"Is this true, Mr Beeblebrox?" asked the SA.

Zaphod Beeblebrox attempted to answer.

"Hello!" interrupted Gag. "Truth serum! 'Member? In the shoulder? Don't need to ask him!"

"Oh, right," said the SA.

* * *

Arthur let out a low unnerving moaning sound. It stopped rather suddenly. Tricia McMillian, who was sitting in the row in front of him, glanced up and turned around. Arthur's face had turned red and he seemed to be unconscious, slumped over in his chair, motionless. 

"What the—? Ford!"

"Hey, Trill."

"What's wrong with Arthur?"

"Arthur? I don't—oh, god..."

"What?"

"Is it normal for humans to turn this colour?"

"Well, sometime's their nose or eyes will turn red if they get a cold or the flu, but its more of a vermillion then apple red—"

"Did you say 'the flu'?"

"Yeah, why? Is that bad?"

"Like, influenza?"

"Yes. That's what I said."

"Goosnargh," said Ford, trying to look annoyed.

"What?"

"Influenza, out here, 's kind of like...well, it's not really like any Sol sickness."

"What?"

"Oh, right. Sun sickness. I mean—_Earth_ sickness. I'm just so used to calling planets after the star or stars they orbit around. You know...Betelgeuse I, Betelgeuse II, III, IV, V...my favourite, Betelgeuse VI."

"Earth astrophysicists didn't even know of any other stars that had solid planets outside of the solar system. Let alone populated ones…"

"Your race invented a flying that can take a photo of 10,000 galaxies at once with a lense the size of a phone booth. Do you Earthlings ever actually take the time to examine these pictures?"

"Really, what is wrong with Arthur, Ford?"

"Well, on a planet without an oxidized atmosphere, influenza's kind of like a danger level that's a combination of cancer, ebola and that flesh-eating virus…what was it called?"

"Um…the Flesh-Eating Virus?"

"Oh, yeah. Forgot. Anyway, he's probably going to die."

"What? Oh, christ!"

* * *

The SA's plan was to find some way to get Gag to refer to a point in his past that proves with trustworthiness to the jury. But to do this, he would need to find a point in Gag's further past where he was untrustworthy, so his trustworthiness would seem exceedingly impressive in comparison. 

"How are we even supposed to trust you?" said the SA. "Isn't it true that you were arrested on charges of possesion of banned literature of all ImpNet star systems? Namely, Rin Calshen's _The Art of Telekinesilepathy_?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so," said Gag, only because he knew he had already served his time. There was nothing they could do to him. "It happened about three months ago."

"Really?" said the SA, hiding his nervousness. "I thought it was before that." He now feared that Gag hadn't commited any acts of remarkable trustworthiness in the past three months.

"I told my district police tribes that I didn't have it, and they believed me, but I still had it, so they arrested me. I guess you're right—I'm not really trustworthy."

"But...surely there must be some point in your life when you showed remarkable trustworthiness? Specifically, some time between two months, three weeks and six days, and now?"

"No, I'm afraid not."

The SA's plan was falling apart.

"Objection!" shouted the SA.

"Overruled! You can't object to your own witness!" said Terenax. "Get Mr Halfrunt off the bench. I call upon the defence to…"

* * *

"Excuse me," said Tricia McMillian quietly to one of the many bailiffs in the room, speaking to the one standing guard at the door closest to her seat. "What exactly do we do if one of the...um...audience members...starts to die during procedings?" 

"Oh, don't worry that pretty little head of yours," said the bailiff, flashing her a smile with all his teeth. "I'll handle this. Where is this dying friend of yours?"

"Over there," she said, pointing to Arthur. Ford waved to her and the bailiff.

"No, not you," said Tricia, loud enough for Ford to hear but quiet enough so as to not disturb anyone. Ford looked mildy disappointed as he lowered his hand and turned back to the action at the head of the court.

Tricia pointed to Arthur more clearly.

"See him? The one all red and unconscious?"

"Oh, yeah, I see him. Wait her, sweetie, I'll go get him for you." He flashed her another smile. Tricia was becoming annoyed.

The bailiff moved over to Arthur, looked over him for a few seconds, and then shouted, "Oh, God!" He pulled the motionless mammal over his shoulder and bounded out the nearest door as quickly as he could.

Tricia just stood next to the now unguarded door the smiling bailiff had previously been standing at.

"Told you it was dangerous," called Ford from his seat. A small robotic thing designed for precisely this kind of job quietly glided up to Ford and said in a very metallic voice, "Shhh!"

"Oh, sorry," said Ford to the robot.

"Shh!" it said again, since it had nothing else to say.

Tricia glanced over her shoulder. Another bailiff had already entered the room, and was standing guard at the same post the smiling one had been at.

* * *

"...and another thing," said Gag Halfrunt, before the bailiff next to the bench began physically trying to drag him off the testimony chair. 

"Oh, no! My time's up!" he shouted, trying to hold onto the ledge in front of his seat before he was dragged off. "Zaphod Beeblebrox is a terribly insane man that should rot in jail or at least some manner of cage! I don't really care what kind, just make sure it has biological waste disposal! Because when I was arrested, there was this cell that—"

Gag Halfrunt passed out from a sedative he was injected with by the bailiff that was dragging him.

* * *

Aile Salmenta glanced down at a piece of paper. 

"Who's next?"

"Well, Zafe, let's see...hey, it's one of our witnesses next! Alright!"

"Who is it?"

"Trees-ya Mus-mile-lion." Aile pronounced it like that. He didn't know how to pronounce it.

Zaphod looked at the paper himself. "Tricia Mcmillian," he read. "Tricia McMillian... Trillian! Trillian's testifying next! I just know she'll say such good things about me!"

* * *

"I don't know...I'll probably just say he's a good friend and kind of rowdy, but not a real criminal anymore...or maybe I'll say that he's a criminal, but not a bad one, and they should go easy on him...depends if I testify before or after his crimes are proved," said Ford Prefect. "What do you think you'll say when you go up?" 

"I'll say that he's a jerk and a scoundrel," said Tricia McMillian. "I haven't decided if I'll say he's a criminal yet."

"Geese, lighten up, Trill," said Ford.


	17. Figure out his name yourself

Author's Notes: I've just got the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phase radio scripts, so I'm hoping I might be able to add some more _Hitchhiker_-esque-ity to this story. But never fear—adding a more _Hitchhiker_-y feel to my writing would be a good idea. And you know how wary I am of those. So, I won't succeed, and you'll be back to reading the same old go-nowhere lousy-imitation drivel I pound out of my skull and onto the internet every few months.

Anyway, one more thing. I'm sorry if it's kind of disappointing, but this chapter won't contain any real progress in terms of the trial, but I just wrote it to continue on my basis of this story in the first place, which is to tie up as many of _Mostly Harmless_'s loose ends as possible.

P.S. Who would've guessed that my nicest review yet would be my forty-second?

* * *

**Somewhere in the outlying regions of the Vilact Galaxy**

A dark figure darted into a building.

He had gone into a pub. It was dark and squalid, lit only by the dim light of some lanterns scattered about the room.

The figure ran up to the bartender.

"We gotta get out of here," said the figure.

"Have the Molitevs revolted?" asked the bartender.

"No, it's up there."

"What? The attic?"

"We're all going to die."

A horrible noise filled the room, coming from the sky. It was a horrible shrieking, screeching noise, like a mix between a rumble and a coughing fit. It was coming from a horrible slug-like yellow object hanging in the sky. The sound echoed through the room for about two minutes, before a shaft of light shot down from the sky and struck the street. The cobblestone boulevard fell apart like a phonebook in a washing machine.

The world tore apart and collapsed in on itself. The mantle disappeared. The crust crumbled in and fell into the core. The outer layer of the planet burned up immediately. The fiery inner core disintegrated and evaporated into carbon monoxide.

The planet Ashek was destroyed. It was reduced to nothing more than a large concentration of monogen, one of the deadliest gasses in the Local Group.

The yellow slugs in the sky continued on, flying right through the hydrogen well of a planet they had destroyed in a similar way just a few minutes ago, on to their next destinations.

The slugs had been ships in a very annoying destructor fleet. The announcement had come out in Vogon. The translator was broken.

* * *

Deep in the closest reaches of space to somethings, but the furthest reaches of space to otherthings, a small computer floated through space. It had been designed by a creature that had had nothing better to do than toy with causality. It had been designed to change the probability of everything happening. But it had been lost, and was now floating in the middle of space, with no one to control reality. Sometimes, space rocks would run into it, and some buttons on the keyboard would be pressed. When this happened, something strange would happen, usually a security guard having a heart attack before he could stop an art thief from stealing a priceless piece of audio-art on a planet with a name containing the letters T-O-I-S-R in any order. 

The thing deadly about monogen was that if it touched anything other than plasma (which was all it was touching as it floated in space around the place where Ashek had recently been), it would catch fire and explode.

The causal computer floated into the patch of monogen. The air caught fire and exploded. The computer was destroyed.

Causality exploded with improbability. Luckily, instead of random improbable events happening in various places around the universe, just one near-impossible event happened. The year 68 439 274 B.C. disappeared.

That's all that happened. Some history books disappeared from libraries; some data was erased from electronic databases. The information had never happened. From that moment on, history was 68 439 276, 68 439 275, 68 439 273, 68 439 272, and so on. No one noticed these 365 days' odd lack of existence.

* * *

As time passes on, a single year in the past, and the events that occurred in it through time travel, gradually lose their affect on events in what is most likely the present. For instance: using the standard Earth units of time measurement, say the present year is 3000. If a freak causality incident occurred and the year 2999 was erased from existence, then the present time in the year 3000 would be set back 11 months, 4 weeks, 3 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. The effect 2999 has on 3000 is one second away from total. If 2999 remained and 2998 vanished, then 2999 would be set back 11 months, 4 weeks, 3 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds; conversely, 3000 would be set back 11 months, 4 weeks, 3 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 58 seconds. The effect 2998 has on 3000 is two seconds away from total. 2997's effect on 3000 was 3 seconds away, 2996's effect was 4 seconds, and so on.

* * *

With all the time travel, space-time disruption and probability tampering Arthur Dent had suffered throughout his life, he had no idea what period in time he was living in. He, in fact, was living in the exact period in time in which the year 68 439 274 B.C.'s effect on Arthur Dent's present year was exactly 31535999 seconds. This means that Arthur Dent's present was, unexpectedly, set back exactly one second.

* * *

A nurse began quickly typing on a computer keyboard. A doctor came up and asked how the patient was doing, what was wrong with him, and who he was. 

"Well, we don't know his name, and we're not sure what species he is, but we're almost positive that he's got—"  
"A visitor," said a third voice, walking in the room. "Step aside. I didn't sneak out the side-door of a courtroom unnoticed due to confusing caused by a door guard spontaneously combusting to...um...I don't know, get blocked."

Ford Prefect (for it was he) looked down at the disheveled body lying on the stretcher below him.

"Well, he's looked worse..." said Ford, "...but he's looked better. Oh, who am I kidding, he hasn't look better. You look great, buddy!"

Arthur didn't stir. He just lay lifelessly.

"Well, you aren't very fun."

"Excuse me, you can't be here," said the nurse.

"Go back to grad school, intern," said Ford. "And you—"

He turned to the doctor.

"—do I know you?"

"You look familiar," said the doctor. "But I'm pretty sure I've never met you."

The doctor glanced down at Arthur again.

"At least, not anymore," continued the doctor to Ford. "Get out of here."

"Hey, he's got visitation rights!" said Ford.

"He's not in jail, he's in a hospital!"

"Hospital _wing_."

"Does that matter?"

"It does to an architect."

* * *

Deep inside Arthur Dent's body, a million billion viral footsoldiers were busy at work inside his bloodstream, slowly eating away at the flesh cells around his veins and capillaries. They all did the exact same work at the exact same time. With each passing moment, they grew closer to digging a tunnel out of the veins far enough to be completely in the tunnel. The tunnels were very short at the moment, however they were gaining ground. Soon, the viral attackers managed to get themselves in the tunnel and out of the flow of anything in the veins.

* * *

Just then, 68 439 274 B.C. disappeared, and the present was set back one second. In the previous second, the viruses had dug a virus-sized hole in Arthur Dent's veins. In the following second, the viruses climbed into the hole. When the present was sent back one second, all of the work done by the viruses in the previous second was lost forever. Thus, everything dug in the walls of Arthur Dent's veins was gone, but the viruses were still in the tunnels, so the virus-sized holes remained, whilst the link between the veins and the holes were sealed, leaving the viruses trapped and immobilized, and, horribly, painfully, agonizingly, killed.

* * *

"Wait, what'd you mean with that 'not anymore' comment?" asked Ford, but he was interrupted by a very rude hominid of the genus _homo imperium_. The hominid woke up and said, "Am I in space?" 

"No, you're on Damogran," said Ford.

"Anything that's not Earth is 'space.'"

"The space where Earth was is space then."

"That doesn't count."

The doctor picked something off a medical supplies table.

"Well, this patient's condition seems to be worsening," he said.

"Actually, I feel quite alright," said Arthur, confused.

"This won't do," continued the doctor. "We'll have to operate."

"What?"

The doctor held up the thing he had picked up. It was a knife—that looked so dangerous, it made Arthur, a man who wished for nothing more than to lead a normal life, wish he were anything but normal. He wished that he were abnormal in the way that he had telekinesis, and could thus prevent that horrible knife from ever coming into contact with him.

"Whoa, watch it!" said Ford.

"I'll watch nothing, Prefect," said the doctor with a cruel contempt for Ford. "After all this time, I've come back as a creature identical to Arthur Dent. He kills me when I'm lower than him, he kills me when I'm higher than him, but now our elevation of life formations is _equal_."

"Arthur, what is he talking about?" asked Ford.

"Life forms, I think," said Arthur.

"Don't you recognize me, Dent?" said the doctor cooly. "Don't tell me I spent all that time discovering the secret of space-time travel to make myself thirty years older, using the most advance probability networks in the GSN to predict where you would turn up next, and learning how to con the most inept government in the galaxy into giving me a job as head doctor at its law enforcement headquarters, just for you to not recognize me!"

"Wait a minute...what do you mean, 'I've come back?'" asked Arthur.

"No Cathedral of Hate this is, but I will have my revenge," hissed the doctor coldly.

"Cathedral of what?"

"Hate!" shouted the doctor loudly. "The hate I feel for you every time you kill me."

"Every time I ki—? Oh...don't tell me you're...?"

"Reincarnated, for the final time. This time, I'm going to live. It's time for you to die."

"Hey, it wasn't my fault that ship turned up at Lord's! It was Slarti's!"

"Don't bother me with your excuses. It's bad enough you've got scouts out to kill me, now you're pretending you never have."

"Scouts?"

"Yes. That girl with the Wabanatta in my club. Remember? My club, _Beta_? Back when I called myself Mueller?"

"I knew that Italian man was you!" said Arthur. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to kill you that last time! You were the only thing stopping me from having my planet blown up, I didn't want you killed!"

"You're lying," said the doctor.

"No, I'm not, and I wasn't responsible for your death! You weren't out there, you were in the men's room. You didn't see me try to calm her down!"

"You wanted her to kill me. It's your fault."

"I didn't want her to kill you! I didn't even know she would be there!"

"Then how did you know her?"

"She was my daughter."

"Who gave you the right to procreate?"

"Well...I did. And it wasn't procreation, I just donated sperm samples to get through some borders, then someone picked it up and gave her daughter to me, claiming it was mine just because it was."

"That was your daughter?"

"Yes."

"Your DNA must have a me-killing gene encoded in it."

"Well, what do you expect? When you barge out of the men's room and charge a disillusioned teenager holding a laser gun with the diameter of a telegraph pole, you should be on the lookout for painful death!"

"Likewise," said the doctor. He began curling his fingers menacingly around the knife's handle.

"Help me, Ford!" shouted Arthur. "Well, not actually you Ford, but get someone to help me!"

The doctor held up his knife and brought it down to Arthur Dent's disease-ridden, immobile, and helpless body.

Well, not exactly helpless.

Ford Prefect sprung into action as soon as the knife began coming down. The doctor was holding it in his left hand. Ford was standing to the left of the doctor. As the doctor's arm came down, Ford reached out and snatched the doctor's arm. He quickly jerked the doctor's arm towards his shoulder. The doctor, in a great deal of pain from having his arm pulled like it was, wheeled around to his left to face Ford, then reached forward with his right arm for his left hand with the knife. Ford twisted the doctor's left hand so the knife was facing the doctor. Ford did this just in time to have the doctor's right hand collide with his left one, impaling the knife through his right hand. The doctor howled with pain. Ford, who was still holding the doctor's left hand, and now, since they were attached via a knife, his right hand, drove the two hands and the knife straight forward at the doctor's defenseless face. The knife ploughed right into the doctor's forehead.

The doctor collapsed to the ground, dead.

The nurse, having fled right after the doctor's hand was pierced, accidentally fallen out of a window, landed in the ocean right outside the island, and drowned, was no longer present to stop Ford from picking up a clipboard with a form on it with various information about Arthur and his recent arrival in the wing. Ford took out the form, and then took out his copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide. He turned the Guide over, took off the battery cap and took out one of the batteries. He turned the Guide back over and held the form against it. Ford scratched the battery against the glass screen of the Guide, creating a small spark. The spark ignited the form Ford was holding against the Guide. After a few seconds of the paper burning, Ford shook it a little to fan out the flames more. Before the fire reached his hand, he tossed it out the same window the nurse had fallen out of, where it landed and sunk into the ocean, nothing more than a heap of ashes now.

"There," said Ford breathlessly, sliding the battery back into the Guide. "Your record's destroyed. You were never here."

"Ford..." murmured Arthur. "Did you just kill him, or is this an anesthesiac hallucination?"

"Yeah, I killed him."

"Where did you learn—?"

"I'm a hitchhiker. I picked up a lot of stuff between Krikkit and that robot that crushed Harrods."

"But...you're going to get in trouble."

"Oh, come on, Arthur. We're in the middle of Zaphod Beeblebrox's trial. _Zaphod Beeblebrox_. The trial of the quadrillennium! No one will notice one little homicide."

"Ford, think things through for once!"

"Arthur, even if they do find out about this, they'll never catch me. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even look for me. Law enforcement in the Galactic Commonwealth is nothing more than a load of Vogon-run poetry writers. You know that, you've met Galacticops before."

"You're right, Ford. Anyone who spends so much as a week with you would have excellent knowledge of what it's like to deal with the police."

"Don't I know it. Did you know that doctor?"

"In a strictly impossible way, yes."

"Well, why was he trying to kill you?"

"He was trying to return a favor or two."

"Really? Well, we should probably get going. I think Trillian's going to give her testimony soon."

"Ford, I may not feel sick anymore, but I still can barely move."

"Take a few of these," said Ford, handing Arthur a small bottle of yellow and red pills. Arthur was suspicious, so he only took one. He instantly felt rejuvenated.

"Dear God," said Arthur in surprise. "What are these?"

Ford looked uneasy for a moment. "Erm...painkillers. Probably. Come on, I'll help you up."

* * *

The theory of reincarnation is generally accepted as the process of an organism dying, going to some kind of underworld for a short period of time, then having their soul put into a new organism just as it's being born. But the strange thing about reincarnation that the Universe's religious interpreters and word-spreaders have no idea about is that reincarnation does not always happen when a soul is put into a newborn organism. For it to qualify as reincarnation, all that needs to happen is a soul being put into any previously non-living organism. It can indeed count as reincarnation if a soul is put into the body of a previously dead organism that had suffered a heart attack, died, and then had a miraculous recession.

* * *

Probability is fickle, and often illusory. And sometimes even cruel. And the doctor that had recently been killed by Ford Prefect now appreciated the scope of its cruelty (of course, to the doctor, he had not been killed by Ford Prefect, but rather Arthur Dent, through Ford Prefect). 

The doctor knew he was reincarnated when he found himself in the body of what appeared to be a homeless man lying by some garbage cans in a squalid alley that smelled of beans (he did not know the homeless man had recently had a heart attack, nor did anyone else). He knew he was on Earth when he saw a nearby telephone pole with a notice stapled to it reading:

_SUSTAINING THE ENVIRONMENT FOR A SECURE FUTURE  
APRIL 22 IS INTERNATIONAL EARTH DAY 2009_

"Another home on another world...another life I've traveled to..." murmured the doctor-turned-homeless man. He looked up at the sky and said poetically, "Oh ye merciful gods of fate, have pity on this neo-metaphysical nomad, drifting through causality to end in a death at the hands of the demon they call Dent."

Suddenly, a discarded newspaper blew past him in the wind, and something caught his eye. It was the headline. A name he knew, a face he recognized.

It was a photograph of Arthur Dent, in what appeared to be a prison, being led down a hallway in an orange uniform by some gruff-looking guards. There were several dozen eager-looking reporters, journalists and cameramen, most of them thrusting microphones at the guards. Dent's head was hung low, and his face looked solemn and even vaguely depressed.

The homeless man read the headline.

_DENT SENTENCED TO DEATH  
Trial of Stavrolos Mueller's killer ends in death sentence_

The homeless man was in shock. His eyes quickly scanned over the article.

"But...Dent didn't kill me, it was his daughter," he thought to himself. "But...not anymore. What happened? What universe is this that I'm in, where Arthur Dent is scheduled to die today? Wait, where's that voice coming from?"

It was a radio, from a window in the apartment building he was sitting against, a few floors up.

"..._65 degrees on this beautiful Saturday morning here in sunny California_..."

"Saturday?" he thought. "But this newspaper says it's Friday...which means it's a day old...which means...Arthur Dent is already dead!"

The homeless man leapt up and laughed with joy.

"My life is secure! No longer will I have to live in fear of Arthur Dent killing me!" he cried. He was so happy that he was dancing as he skipped out of the alley and onto the street, where he was run over by a passing lorry.

Fear not, he was reincarnated soon after, in the same Dent-less universe he was just in. But something had changed—he no longer remembered Arthur Dent. And even if he were reminded of Arthur Dent, he wouldn't know whom that was. Arthur Dent was finally, once and for all, out of his life, in all planes of probability, causality, multiversality, forever.

And so ends that chapter of Arthur Dent's life.


	18. Trillian's Testimony

**August 1, 2011**

**Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Centre**

Arthur, still weak and frail, had to walk alongside Ford with his arm around his friend's shoulders. It took a great deal of effort not to wrap his fingers around Ford's neck and strangle him.

They passed a vending machine with the phrase ſں۳ťΔБﺎИЌ written on it in some alien language Arthur didn't recognize.

Ford stopped at the machine, reached into his satchel, and pulled out his copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He opened the book up, pried open the back cover, and withdrew a piece of silicon rougly the size and shape of a single strand of hair.

"A single piece of silicon is roughly the size and shape of, say, a single strand of hair," explained Ford, "but it's harder than diamond."

Ford walked over to the vending machine and gripped the metal padlock keeping the machine shut.

"All you need is a single missing molecule, slip in the silicon, and it can move freely throughout the entire substance," explained Ford, as the strand entered the seemingly solid shackle and began moving through. Eventually, the silicon seemed to have cleared a path through the entire bar as the end of it slipped through the other side.

The shackle, with an entire slice cut through its interior, broke in two, one piece falling to the floor, the other piece swinging to the side as Ford swung it to the side.

Ford pulled off the lock, pulled open the vending machine's cover, reached into the rack inside and pulled out a bottle of green liquid. Since the bottle wasn't completely full, as bottles of soft drink usually aren't, Arthur could see a clear area of plastic near the top right under the cap. The plastic was colourless. The liquid inside was actually green.

"Why did you just steal a bottle of industrial waste?"

"If you couldn't tell for six years that I shared a name with a widly unpopular car in the 50's," said Ford Prefect, "then I don't think you'll understand why I chose to steal a fizzy instead of paying for one."

Arthur took on a look of annoyance or protest, but then said, "You've got a point."

He then added, "That reminds me, how could you go six years on Earth without realising cars were vehicles?"

"Well, I already had 'Ford Prefect' as an idenitity, on all my ID cards and stuff. I couldn't just go ahead and _change_ my name, now could I?"

"Actually, yes, you could."

"Oh...really?"

"Yes. People get a name change all the time. It's a legal process. I'm not exactly sure about the details, but the techinal term is 'name change.'"

"I see. And you can just...?"

"Yes."

Ford paused for a while. "Shit," he said eventually.

"Starpox, Ford," corrected Arthur. "You're not on Earth anymore. We don't speak Modinsc anymore."

Ford smiled. "Modinsc?"

"Sorry...but I've been in space for a long time, and that's just my term for Earth English, not Babel Fish English."

Ford smiled again.

"You're growing up, Arthur," he told him. "You're moving on."

"I was on Earth for 30 years," said Arthur. "I've been off Earth—or at least not on the Earth that was my home—for coming up on half that. I've accepted that Earth is gone. But like you said, the Galaxy's a fun place."

Ford smiled more than Arthur had ever seen him. It was not an especially extravagent or wide smile, but the human could see it in the alien's eyes—a sense of welcome. A sense of respect.

"Welcome to space, mate," said Ford Prefect.

Thirty-six seconds later, Ford mulled over what Arthur had said, then came across something most odd.

"What's the thing about you human Earth people with naming things after what they are?"

"Oh, well...er, Ford...I don't know what—uh, people...of your species...sorry?"

"Just call me a Betelgeusian."

"Alright. I don't know what Betelgeusians do when they name things, but we humans like to name things based on what a good name for them would be."

"No, like—naming proper things what they are."

"Like?"

"Well, er...take your planet."

"My home."

"That too. It's a big ball, made of earth, like, soil, so you name it the Earth? Talk about uncreative."

"Well, Ford, you see, we invented the word for soil after we—"

"And you named your sun, the Sun. And your moon, the Moon."

"And we named the slowest, shoddiest, ugliest car a load of assembly line workers could string together in the five minutes they had before coffee break, the Ford Prefect."

"What's this about an assembly line?"

"You know, I'm starting to think _Mostly harmless_ is actually a more accurate description of Earth than anything you could come up with."

"Be that as it may..."

"And anyway, you do it too."

"Do what?"

"You aliens name things what they are."

"We do?"

"You named your galaxy the Galaxy."

"Aha. No we didn't. That's just a nickname. We call it Vilact."

"I thought you called it the Milky Way?"

"No, you thought we called it the Galaxy. We do call it the Milky Way, but that's just a translation into Standard Tongue. It's like if there was a Latin name for something, but some people insist on saying it in English. Like the phrase is _et cetera_, but some people insist on saying _so on_. Vilact is a Galacticspeke word."

"Galactic-what?"

"Galacticspeke."

"Galacticspeak?"

"Yeah, but it's S-P-E-K-E, not S-P-E-A-K."

"Oh, okay. Well, of course, Vilact is Galacticspeke. I should've known that, what with me being such a Galacticspeke etymologist and all. Wait—how did you know I thought it was E-A-K?"

"Everyone in the universe is born with two psychoprojective abilities, some more pronounced than others. My primary sense is psychokinesis," said Ford Prefect, as he let go of his drink bottle, watch the cap become unscrewed, then, after a few seconds of not holding it, reached up an grabbed it out of the exact place in the air it had just been.

"My secondary sense is telepathy," said Ford. "It's not as good, but I always know if someone hears a word for the first time and they think it's spelled a way it's not."

"Oh...well, that's mildly impressive, Ford."

"Well, not really. Yours is an easy mind to crack."

"I'll have you know my mind is a last-generation product of the greatest electronic computation experiments in the history of time and everything. I think."

"Yeah, well...you think just because a giant supercomputer made you, you're a super genius?"

"Well, that's not quite what I—"

"Do you believe Deep Thought?" asked Ford.

"Well...yes. He created me."

"So, he's like God in a way?"

"I suppose."

"And God's never wrong?" continued Ford.

"So the Church of England would have you believe."

"Then Deep Thought's never wrong?"

"He can't be...if it was smart enough to create me, then surely it's smart enough to never be wrong."

"But do you believe the Answer to Everything is the number 42?"

"No, not as such."

"Then you don't trust Deep Thought enough. It didn't know a thing. No—actually, it did know one ething. It knew that if you sit very still for seven and a half million years, presumably thinking about the answer to a question, then people will think whatever answer you give is right. 42 just sounded nice."

"Where did you get all this?"

"Marvin's my roommate, and his power switch snapped off after a long period of exhaustion brought on by being turned to _Off_ too many times. You can't shut him off; only he can do that, so you just have to listen to his ramblings. Some of the things he says stick with you."

"I see."

"And Deep Thought didn't create you."

"Oh, right...I was a Golgafrincham descendant."

"Wrong again. Actually, you created yourself."

"Did I now."

"Remember that Golgafrincham girl, Malla?"

"Mella."

"Right...Marvin's worked out that that time you, yunnow...she must've had a kid. Then that kid had a kid, then that second kid had a third one, and all the way down to your mother, who had you."

"Interesting...so, my earliest ancestor was myself. Well, I'm not surprised. I was always told I shared a few personality traits with me."

"Goosnargh," said Ford with mild interest.

"Wait a minute," said Arthur. "Those girls. Mella and—?"

"Agda."

"Very good. Mella and Agda. Mella told me they were, cousins I think."

"Go on?"

"Then they would've had the same DNA.

"Yeah."

"Doesn't that mean that—oh. You _did_ sleep with her, didn't you?

"Well, neither of us were actually asleep, but yeah."

"Alright. Well, by Marvin's logic, doesn't that mean, _you_ could've created me?"

"Frightening thought."

"So...if I kill you, would I disappear?"

"Well, only one way to find out. But you would never kill me, Arthur. You know how ruthless these police are. Especially with homicides. They'd hunt you down and shoot you to death straight away, just because they've got an itchy trigger finger."

"But, back there—didn't you just...?"

"Yeah, you got me. But even if I did break the law, they'll never catch me," said Ford. "It was just a bottle of Galactipop."

"Why do you aliens name everything starting with _galacti_?"

"In honour of the old Imperelata Galacticon."

"Right. Impralatta Glacticon," said Arthur, spelling it wrong in his mind. "You know me, Mr Galacticspeke Etymology."

"Really? Great. Do you know the first recorded use of the word_ klopinos_? Modern etymo's have worked it down to the Early Galiktospak word _kliop_, dated about 1937 B.R., but that's as far as they can get."

"Ford."

"Yeah?"

"Remember when I told you about that sarcasm thing?"

"Right, yeah, of course. Often untruthful words spoken in a humorous or mocking way in order to oh wait you were doing that just now."

"Yes."

"Well...got it on my second try."

"Second try. Not bad at all."

* * *

Gag Halfrunt was very annoyed. Ford Prefect had failed to have Arthur Dent killed. Not only that, he had now commited a crime. What if the police found out? What if they execute him? What if they give him an autopsy? What if they find the virus that was inflicted into him?Then Gagwould be arrested as well. 

"That fool will ruin me!" thought Halfrunt. "They're only Þ1.50! Can't he just _buy_ the drink!"

* * *

Ford and Arthur walked up to the large grey oak doors at the front of the courtroom. As the two of them held up their ID cards and the bailiff stepped aside, Arthur said, "Ford, are you all right? Your eyes are all red, and you look like you're half asleep." 

"Wha? No, no it's nothing, just think I'm sick or something...probably caught it from you."

* * *

Halfrunt was more annoyed now. 

"Ford Prefect might know he was infected," thought the psycologist. "The memories could come back from his subconscious. I can't risk him telling anyone what I did. After the human dies, so does he."

"My lord," said the bailiff next to the bench, "the witnesses have arrived."

"Thank you, underling," said Judiciary Terenax. "This court resumes being in session!"

He banged his gavel.

"Mr Salmenta, you may begin," said Terenax.

"Thank you, Mr Terenax," said Aile. "The—"

"_Ahem_."

"Huh? Oh! Oh, right. Uh, sorry. Thank you, _your honour_. The defence calls upon Ms Trishia Mick-mile-lan."

"Who?" said Terenax.

"Tricia McMillan," said Zaphod.

"Yeah, her," said Aile.

Just as Arthur and Ford sat down in their seats, they watched Trillian get up from her seat and walk towards the front of the room.

* * *

"Weren't there two Trillians when time stopped back on that Earth?" asked Arthur. 

"Hm?" asked Ford.

"Yes, yes, definitley there was...one was blonde, one was a brunette..."

"Oh, yeah...well, that explains why there's only one."

"It does?"

"Sure. One had really bright blonde hair, and the other had really dark brown hair. Look at the Trillian up at the bench. Her hair's straw coloured. Half-blonde, half-brown."

"You're right," said Arthur. "It's mixed."

* * *

After Tricia took her seat at the bench, the bailiff came up to her with that same featurless, nondescript, neutrally grey book he had presented Gag Halfrunt with. 

"Nebula or cosmos?" asked the bailiff.

"Cosmos," said Tricia.

"Star cloud?"

"67451."

"Planet?"

"Earth."

"Country?"

"England."

"Religion?"

"Atheism."

The book in the bailiff's hand disappeared.

"Oh. Uh...?"

"You can't exactly swear to tell the truth on a bible if you don't have one," said the bailiff. "Now how do we know you won't lie?"

"Er...sorry."

"I try to do my job, and I just...can't," continued the bailiff.

"That's enough, Roy," said Terenax.

"I thought this was a more spiritual galaxy, but I—"

"_That_'_s enough_," said Terenax louder.

"Sorry," said the bailiff.

"You know what?" said the judge. "You're fired."

"You don't need to do that..."

"See what you've done?"

"I didn't...er...mean...look, you have my word, I'm not going to lie."

"Describe your relationship with the defendant."

"What? Oh...your Zaphod's lawyer."

"Describe your relationship with the defendant, human-girl."

"Um...that's kind of hard to do."

"Is it?"

"Can't I just explain...uh, um...well...?"

She was trying to think of a way to say 'what I did with him' without it sounding other than she wanted.

"Er...can I just explain what he did in my time with him?"

_Perfect_, she thought.

"Oh. Alright," said Aile. "How did you meet him?"

"I know who you're talking about, but I must ask, to annoy you."

"The defendant."

"I met him verbally."

"Okay, when did you meet him?"

"What year is it?"

"Earth-year?"

"No, you can use BR, I understand physics out here now."

"All right. The year is 2756 BR."

"Okay, hang on...2756...round off to...four to three...I met him 12 years ago."

"Where?"

"Earth."

"Where is that?"

"It's gone now, but it _was_ in ZZ9 +Z_n_ A."

"Alright. Under what circumstances did you and the defendant meet?"

"It was at a party."

"A convention?"

"What?"

"A Party convention?"

"I...I don't follow."

"You know. Like, the Feudalist Party National Convention."

"Oh. Oooh...oh, I see...no, no, not a _political_ party. A social gathering."

"Oh, right, of course...how silly of me."

"This party was on Earth, in England."

"And that's a city?"

"No, it's a country."

"What continent was it in?"

"Er...Europe."

"You mean Eurasia?"

"No, I don't."

"Technically, Europe is only a subcontinent."

"Oh, of course. You're speaking geopolitically."

"Yes, I am. So this was in the continent of England—"

"Country."

"Country of England...in the subcontinent of Europe?"

"Yes, I suppose."

"No, that's impossible, England isn't a country, it's a state."

"Well, state and country can be interchangable, but England is actually a country in the federation of Britain."

"Yes, but _federation_ isn't a legal term, it just implies something federated."

"Well, how do you mean 'legal term?'"

"Something like _country_ or _continent_."

"Well, the UK is an exception to the rule of a country being divided into provinces or states."

"Hey, no using _state_. That can mean country or province, it's too confusing."

"You're right. Anyway, the UK is a country, divided into nations. I hope that helps."

"Wait—you kay?"

"United Kingdom."

"Oh, it's a kingdom? That complicates things."

"Well, it's ultimately a kingdom, but it's essentially a democracy. The king—or queen, should I say...well, probably a king by now...anyway, the country's headed by the basic parliament and prime minister system, but the king notorizes all the bills and can overturn any law passed or things like that, but—wait, what the hell are we talking about? I met the defendant at a social gathering in the country of England in the city of London in the district of Islington. Got it?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. So...how'd it go?"

"God, I feel like I'm on a game show. He came up to me while I was talking to one of the other witnesses here, and he said...I can't remember, he said—he said he had a spaceship or something, and he invited me to come with him. I thought he was trying to be clever. He failed of course, but it was a valiant attempt, so I came with him. Wait—I went to get my bag first...no, wait, no I didn't. Anyway, he went outside, he caught a taxi and led me clear across the city down to Westminster...down to some club by the river...he led me through the door, and it was unlike any club I'd ever been to...it was all gleaming red and blue, and there were big computer consoles all over the walls, and this huge row of windows along one of the walls...by now, the door I had walked in through had disappeared...by the time I looked out the windows, everything was white...then we got out of the clouds and everything the only light was the slit of sun across the Earth's curve...

"So do I keep going?"

"Uh, yeah, sure."

"Okay, well, during the next half hour, he explained who he was, and all that. His name, his background, his status as president—then, after I asked him some questions, he explained that there was extraterrestrial sentient life, and that they had built up the galaxy into a political and cultural system that I now realise isn't to different from the one back on Earth. I asked him to tell me everything about history, culture, science, life, in the rest of the galaxy. Telling me everything he knew about all those things took 35 or the the remaining 36 seconds we had on our trip before we landed on Damogran. When we got out, I found that 2 and a half months had passed in the 29 minutes I had been on his spaceship. There was some big launching ceremony, no one would really explain anything to me, but something that looked like a walking tree sat me down in the front row...then he went up on a podium and mumbled something about democracy and said _wow_ a bunch of times...then he threw a bomb in the audience and everything turned into ice...when I woke up, I was on that weird white ship that was next to the podium."

"Let me go back to what you said—_mumbled something about democracy_. What do you mean, mumbled?"

"Well, you know, his voice was kind of slurred, and he didn't really know what he was—wait, you're trying to prove he was on drugs, wasn't he?"

"No, of course not. That's absurd. You're making up things."

"Well, then you're trying to prove he was insane."

"No, of course we're not."

"Well, he was insane, but in the strictly non-clinical sense. He was really stupid."

"Stupid enough to—?"

"None of that 'enough to...' shit. He was stupid, that's all. He stole the ship, and he was in a perfect state of mind."

"Do you know what it's like to have two brains, constantly competing, tearing yourself apart?" asked Aile.

A strange feeling went though Tricia's brain, as if she had two minds, seperated in time and space, trying to connect.

"You know what?" said Tricia. "Yes, actually I do."

"Well, then we agree to disagree," said Salmenta.

"He had two heads, but they worked in symmetry. There was no competition. And during those 17 days I had before we met the two other defendants that led to this whole fiasco, I spent most of my time exploring the Heart of Gold, and I found out that even though he would've been on (illegal) drugs during the time of his re-election campaign, he quit a little later, and he was clean during the time he stole the ship. Got it?"

"You don't know the long-term effects of the drugs he took."

"I think I do."

"I think you don't."

"You're a terrible lawyer."

"Zaphod Beeblebrox was insane and didn't know what he was doing and you know it!"

"Zaphod Beeblebrox was a moron and knew perfectly well what he was doing in every fibre of the misplaced livers he called one and a half brains and _you_ know it!"

"Objection!"

"Overruled! You can't object to your own witness!"

"I know! I just want to get rid of her!"

"Fine. Have it your way. Get Ms McMillan off the bench."

* * *

Aile returned to the desk in front of the audience. 

"My god, it was like watching a train wreck in slow motion," said Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Well, you didn't help much," said Aile Salmenta. "How are we going to prove you weren't of sound mind while you stole the ship? Really, going off drugs _after_ the election? How could you be stupid enough to stop being a junkie while you were president?"

"Maybe it's you who's state of mind should be questioned."

"Be that as it may, I—"

"Oh, give it a rest."


	19. Infinite Implausibility Drive

Author's Notes: Er, sorry about the absense. My modem shut down and I lost the internet for a few days. But I'm back now. This chapter is some random nonsensery I wrote because I'm trying to remember which witness tesitifies next. You'll probably all hate it and write a bunch of flames for me. Oh, well. Who cares.

* * *

A small television flickered on. On a dark black background, in dark green letters, the screen displayed the following message: 

"_Welcome to the Television Program Reference Portal for the Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Agency Trial Number X9ZC4_δκγ_9817, a defense or prosecution team member's number one source for media broadcasts about the trial, arrest, defendant or prosecutor of a certain trial, with information or evidence you may have missed during your research_._ Please enter the serial number of the television program of your choice to watch the part of it with information that could help you in your argument for this trial_._ You have selected program X9_._698467X777774/0_._918_._ Please wait while the GFLEA temporarily rewrites regional copyright laws in order to display the copyrighted film material without breaking any laws that provably exist during the display_._ The laws have been rewritten_._ Thank you for waiting_._ The selected material will now display_."

The television stopped displaying letters and switched to a fifteen-year-old news report.

"_Good temporal period_._ I'm JinJenz, and welcome to OmniNews on 7D Gal_._/Sid_._ News, the best coverage in interplanetary weather, sports and news reports brought to you here on the sub-ether wave band, broadcasting around the Galaxy around the clock, and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere_..._and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys_._ And of course, the big news story tonight is the sensational theft of the new Improbability Drive prototype ship by none other than Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox_._ And the question everyone's asking is_..._Has the Big Z finally flipped_?"

It's amazing how boring news reports can be, even to the one person whom the information contained within it mattered the most to in the entire universe.

The person watching the report was Aile Salmenta, lawyer of the one the report was about. He watched with extreme boredom as the image box next to the newsman's head continued to flip through various extremely boring images Aile had seen a million times.

Footage of the ship being prepped for launch a few hours before on the Damograin launch pad, Zaphod Beeblebrox's presidential inaguration on Megabrantis VII, Zaphod's annoyingly short speech before the actual lacunav, Zaphod filling out some forms to verify his patent of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster...oddly, there was no film of the actual theft itself.

The newsman disappeared and was replaced by a rather sinister looking psycologist, dismissing Zaphod as being just this guy, you know?

All this useless shit. No film of the theft.

Aile felt his fingers tighten around the arms of his chair.

If OmniNews didn't have film of it, no one did.

OmniNews was the Galaxy's _Times_. Its CNN. Its CBC. The one that broke all the stories. The one that had all the evidence. The one that got all the film. If they didn't have it, no one did.

At all.

Ever.

There was no film of the theft.

It was the day after. It was the beginning of the day's preceedings.

* * *

"Your Honour," said Aile Salmenta, "before you call the next witness to the stand, I'd like to present some new evidence!" 

"Very well," said Judiciary Terenax. "Go ahead, Mr Salmenta."

"With pleasure!" said Aile with pleasure. "My proof, your Honour, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is this, and purely this.

"Nothing."

There was a pause of about 15 seconds.

The SA stood up and said, "Your evidence is nothing?"

"Well, if you say so, Mr Sectoral Attorney," said Aile, "if _you_ say so. But only if you replace _your_ with _my_."

"You're saying my evidence is nothing?"

"Yes! It's non-existent! And I can prove it's non-existent, by putting forth a new argument. I submit, to this court, that _Zaphod Beeblebrox did not steal the _Heart of Gold!"

Some people gasped. Some others said, "What?"

Most people just remained quiet.

"L-let me get this straight," said the SA. "You're telling this court...that Zaphod Beeblebrox...did not steal the _Heart of Gold_?"

"Yes."

"The Zaphod Beeblebrox sitting right next to you?"

"Yes."

"The defendant of this trial?"

"Yes."

"He didn't hijack and/or steal the _Heart of Gold_?"

"No, he didn't steal it."

"The _Heart of Gold_, the ship?"

"Indeed."

"The one with the Infinite Improbability Drive?"

"That's the one."

"Well, I thank you."

"You do?"

"Yes. Because I have long been trying to prove that you are clinically insane, and now you've provided me with cause."

"No! No! I'm not insane! He didn't steal it!"

Zaphod Beeblebrox himself, sitting next to Aile Salmenta, grabbed the attorney by the tie and ripped him down to eye level.

"Please," said Zaphod, "for the love of any god, deity, spirit or divine being that any manner of life form could possible regard as worshipable, tell me this is some kind of horrendous joke."

"In due time, young Zaphod, in due time," said Aile quietly, standing back up. In a louder voice, he said, "I insist that my client did not steal the _Heart of Gold_ because there is no proof of this!"

"Other than five thousand witnesses," said the SA.

"Really? I'd like to meet every single one of them and hear what happened."

"You know that's impossible!"

"Wrong! Haven't you ever heard of the Imperial Congition Drive?"

"Er..."

"You and I both know that it's the newest and most advance temporal memory drive available to members of the federal government. Via theGalactic Nervous System Register, we can access specific memories in the temporal lobe of any official citizen of the Galactic Commonwealth."

"Well, yes..."

"Let's research the memory of all the witnesses at the launch ceremony, shall we?"

Aile took out a handheld computer and, with new ultra-highly evolved eyesight, was able to select a certain sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-category of _Heart of Gold_ engineers, as well as accessing their memories of the Heart of Gold launch, in an amount of time so short, to correctly display it mathematically, the number would require no less than sixteen decimal points. Not sixteen decimal places, the decimal points themselves.

The menu Aile Salmenta scrolled through looked like this:

* * *

>Flora  
Fauna  
Microscopa  
Imaginaria 

Colourid  
Fishid  
>Homonid  
Lizarid  
Treeid  
Walking teeid

Civilian  
>Government  
Indiscernible

Covert  
>Federal  
Local  
Official

>Development  
Federatory  
Field  
Military  
Office

Biology  
Defence  
>Aviation  
Transportation  
Temporology

>Engineer  
Maintainancer  
Researcher  
Scientist  
Technician

General  
>Specific

>Astronomical  
Terrestrial  
Spacetimeial  
Submarineal

Aorism  
Biology  
Electricity  
Fuel  
>Probability

Finite  
>Infinite

>Heart of Gold  
Heart of Megagold  
Heart of Megasteel  
Heart of Monogen  
Heart of Platinum  
Heart of Zetamonogen

As Aile programmed in the spacetime coordinates for the _Heart of Gold_ launch, he stood up and began wiring in his computer to a large vidscreen next to the bench. The screen began displaying the images seen by all the members that fell into the GNSR plural-sub-category that Aile Salmenta had selected—five thousand engineers, on that fateful day fifteen years prior.

* * *

The image was Zaphod Beeblebrox. 

He was standing on a large podium on a platform in front of a huge reception committee. His face was grinning, his eyes were glittering in the light of thirty dozen camera flashes coming from the media box, and one of his mouths was saying, "_That is really amazing_. _That really is truly amazing_. _That is so amazingly amazing that I'd like to steal it_."

Both Aile Salmenta and the SA smiled apprehensively, both convinced they knew what was coming next. Zaphod Beeblebrox put his faces in his hands. The witnesses put their faces in a look of extreme boredom.

Back on the vidscreen, everyone in the courtroom watched as Zaphod Beeblebrox let out a loud scream of joy, raised one of his hands, and hurled a small white globe at the ground.

And then the image froze.

And then it continued.

Zaphod Beeblebrox was gone. So was the _Heart of Gold_.

But there had never been any images of him actually stealing the ship.

"What?" said the SA. "That's impossible! Rewind the film!"

"Memory, not film."

"Whatever! Just do it!"

The film restarted. Zaphod. Ship. White thing. Flash. No Zaphod. No ship.

"And it's a memory, so there's no chance of film being lost," reminded Aile.

"Wait...zoom in on that white round thing," said the SA.

The film restarted again. Zaphod. Ship. White thing. Zoom. Bigger white thing.

"Wait! I know what that is!" said the SA. "That's a Paralyso-Matic bomb! Now I understand it—Beeblebrox through the bomb so no one could stop him from stealing the ship, and the paralysis in all the audience included all the constantly moving syanpses in the audience member's nervous systems...and when their nervous systems were frozen, their brain stopped working, and so did the temporal lobe...so they couldn't take in any memories...and thus none of them saw the theft! That's all it is!"

"A Paralyso-Matic?" said Aile. "Perish the thought! It was a genetically modified apple, made to be white-colored."

"An apple? That's nonsense!"

"Prove it!"

"Well, you know I can't!"

"Yes, I do. I know you can't provide proof, and I know you can't provide evidence!"

"This is insane!"

"To you, it is!"

"Well, how did Zaphod Beeblebrox disappear from the launch pad? How did the _Heart of Gold_ disappear? And how did Beeblebrox get control of the ship after the two disappeared?"

"Why don't you ask him yourself?"

"Alright, I will! Your Honor, I would like to call—"

After evolving into a being that could speak much quicker than the SA, Aile Salmenta shouted,

"YourhonourIwouldliketocallZaphodBeeblebroxtothestand!"

The SA stopped.

"What was that?"

"I'm afraid Mr Salmenta beat you to it, Mr Sectoral Attorney," said Judiciary Terenax.

"Well, that sucks."

* * *

Zaphod Beeblebrox took his place at the stand. 

"Mr Beeblebrox," said Aile Salmenta, "do you recall performing your actions in the film that I showed the court?"

"Of course I do. I have two heads. I have more frontal lobe than a genetically enhanced Memoraven."

"Nice analogy. Anyway, what was that white globe you were holding in the film?"

"An apple."

"An apple, ladies and gentlemen! Now, what happened to you during the missing bit?"

"I was kidnapped by a marauding pack of space pirates and used as a test subject in a new teleporter ray they had built. I was transported into a random region of space; namely, by sheer coincidence, the flight deck of the _Heart of Gold_—where I was forced to pilot away from Damogran to avoid further capture by the pirates."

"There's your story!" shouted Aile. "I defy anyone to prove it's not true!"

"Wait a second..." said the SA. "Didn't you once say he _did_ steal the ship, but he shouldn't be convicted because of insanity or something?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Yes, I believe your exact words were _the defendant may have commited these crimes, but he shouldn't be punished_."

"Court scribe, strike all my references to that argument from the record, please!" said Aile.

"No fair!" said the SA. "Just for that—I'd like to cross-examine the witness!"

"Hell, I fogot he could do that," said Aile.

* * *

"Mr Beeblebrox," said the SA, "if you were the only one to be kidnapped by the pirates, then why were there four people on the _Heart of Gold_ when it landed on Magrathea?" 

"Which I discovered!"

"Why, Mr Beeblebrox?"

"Did I say I was the only person to get kidnapped by the pirates? That's not rhetorical, answer the question."

"Well, no, not persay, you didn't, but—"

"That's like me saying...uh...'I went to the store,' and then you saying, 'Mr Beeblebrox, why do you insist you're the only person who's ever gone to the store?'"

"That's nothing like this situation."

"I'm afraid it is, Mr Essay," said Zaphod. "Tricia McMillian was kidnapped, too."

"Was she? Would she verify this?"

"She's not the one being cross-examined. Can you hurry this up?"

"Very well. Where did the two Earth creatures come from?"

"For fuck's sake, I'm not from Earth!" shouted a voice from the back of the audience.

"Fine. Whatever. Alright, where did the two human_oid_ creatures come from?"

"Dunno. The ship picked 'em up by itself. Cargo bay. Bioelectric-sensitive. You know."

"No, I don't, but alright, that's plausible. The witnesses had better verify this when it's time for their testimony."

"Alright, they will."

"Why did you continue flying the ship even after you were far out of Jujixilard?"

"Well, I was being chased! By the time I realized I was being chased by the police, not the pirates, and that the ship I was flying was the _Heart of Gold_, I was already half way to the lost planet of Magrathea. I couldn't stop, I had to keep going! Then once I got there, I came across these weird mice things that wanted us to pay for an artificial brain for the human over there. I was willing to give them his brain, but I was not about to pay for a new one! Then they said they'd kill us, so we did the only thing we could do to avoid death—me and the crew hightailed it outta there until he got blasted by a bunch of Vogons for no reason, and we were zapped over to Milliways. Now with all this calm restaurant atmosphere, I had a chance to forget the _Heart of Gold_ and leave it there for the proper authorities to return it to the right hands and then I stayed to have a bite to eat. End of story."

"Do you know how insane that sounds?"

"Doesn't matter how insane it sounds, as long as it's plausible."

"I'd say, 'You enjoy doing tormenting me, don't you?' but then it'd sound like I wasn't sure about it."

"Right on."

"Wait, why were the Vogons shooting at you?"

"Why don't you ask them, genesis?"

"I think you mean _genius_."

"Oh, shut up."

"No further questions."

"That is my new motto."

* * *

Author's Notes: In the next chapter, I might just start it with, "A suicide bomber came in and blew up the GFLEC. They all died. The trial ended." And then the story would be done. But that's not cliché enough, and my goal is to leave all my readers with a feeling of surprised unfufillment. Maybe it'll just be "guilty" and that'd be the end of it. 


	20. Roosta's Testimony

Author's Notes: What's that? Assume my unexplained six month absence never happened, you say? Well, if you insist. And might I add—_holy leaping ocelots of the desert planet Kakrafoon and all subsequently revolving moons, this story has forty-six reviews! In your face, previous or later stories that have no more that forty-five reviews!_

_

* * *

_**Stardate September 18, 2000  
Memn O. Reol Hospital  
A66B Finite 9999 Sigma  
Dordellis Quadrant**

It had been ten years since Yooden Vranx had been diagnosed with apomimosis. Only now did Yooden know for sure—he was going to die.

"I am going to die," said Yooden to a small man named Roosta Neffa as he sat in his bed. Yooden sat in his bed, that is. "You ought to know the forthcoming, Roosta."

"I already knew it was your time, sir," replied Roosta.

"I suppose the faithful can always tell if their compatriots are in such dire states as mine."

"No, there's a big _TERMINAL_ on your bedside chart, sir."

The cardiogram quietly hummed.

"Hadn't noticed that," said Yooden. "Do you remember your role in our plan?"

"I am to lead Beeblebrox-1 into Zarniwoop's office," said Roosta, "and then I am to lock the door to the office, so that he cannot exit the construct."

"And so...?"

"And so he won't have entered the real universe."

"He would...?"

"He would have came out through the office window."

"And should you fail?"

"Then we shall never discover the ruler of the universe."

"Well, you shan't have, I'll be dead."

"Well, I shan't have, I'll no doubt be arrested by then."

"And Beeblebrox-4 shan't have, he's dead already."

"And the other Beeblebrox shan't have, or at least he won't know he has, after the operation."

"So...this endeavor is pointless."

"Well, me and Beeblebrox-4 shall be in the afterlife with clear view of all that transpires in the sameworldly universe."

"After having learnt the secrets of life already."

"Thus making this endeavor..."

"_Completely_ pointless?"

"You may possess the ability to lock doors with remarkable speed, I'll give you that, but I always found you to be somewhat of a huge twat."

"And I, you."

"And what else?"

"It's just, couldn't I just murder Beeblebrox? I'd get the rope, we'd all be in Valhalla, and we'd learn the identity of the ruler without any work."

"No."

"Shit."

He added, "Why not?"

"Because then we wouldn't get to meet him."

"Isn't knowing who he is enough? What's the point of meeting the one who runs the universe?"

"I want to chastise him for not doing a very good job of it."

**

* * *

August 5, 2011  
Main Chambers  
Sectoral Attorneyal Offices  
Manxial Division, Damogran**

August 5, 2011Main ChambersSectoral Attorneyal OfficesManxial Division, Damogran 

The Sectoral Attorney leaned back in his chair, glaring at his colleague in an attempt to show his present contempt for all things colleagual.

"What do we know about him?"

"Uh...Roosta Noma Fiyya Neffa. Age 352. Born on Tucana XVIII."

"That's pointless."

"Apparently he was a writer, but no one has any record of what for."

"Yeah, like that's useful."

"All we know is that he helped Beeblebrox do something illegal, but we don't know what."

"We're gonna have to go on instinct. What was he charged with when he was arrested?"

"Grand conspiracy, grand larceny, high treason."

"And what happened to him?"

"He had a strange knowledge of the way locks work. Every cell he was put in ended up with its door wide open. He only escaped the first few times. After that he just waited in his cell to see the guards' reactions. So he was drafted for mining service. He was sent from moon to moon and left there for a few days to search for precious metals, then a police cruiser came and scooped him up and electrocuting him to a ferocity corresponding to how miserably he had failed to find any precious metals on that week's moon. The last one, somewhere in the Jaglan system, he was stranded on. He would've been rescued but the cruiser was attacked by some pirates and he was left there with no way of getting off."

"That's rough."

"Isn't it though."

**

* * *

August 7, 2011  
Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Centre**

"I would like to call Mr. Roosta Neffa to the stand."

"Well, you can't, Mr. Salmenta."

"Why not?"

"Because he's a witness for the prosecution."

"Oh, yeah. Forgot about that."

"I would like to call Mr. Roosta Neffa to the stand."

"Certainly, Mr. Sectoral Attorney."

The large wooden doors opened up. Roosta walked in with a bailiff.

"My, this brings back memories!" he said.

"What, a courtroom?" said the bailiff.

"No," replied Roosta, "somewhere other than a cold, barren, rocky moon."

"Please, Mr. Neffa," said Judiciary Terenax. "Legally, you aren't aloud to talk."

"Legally, yes," said Roosta. "But you obviously have no understanding of probability."

Roosta snapped his fingers. One of the lamps on the ceiling snapped and fell to the floor.

"See?"

"Coincidence."

Roosta blinked. "Yes, probably."

Roosta, having already pulled his hands under his feet, reached forward and stuck a pen into the gear slot and pulled off the now unlocked handcuffs.

"Mr Sectoral Attorney, I must say, what do you intend to prove with my testimony? That is, that hasn't already been proven? I've already provided all the information that could be relevant to this case, as well as much, much more, to a local Sectoral Attorney of the Stingray Nebula eight years ago. My story's on record, hours of it no doubt. I don't even know why I'm here. I'm serving my sentence. I could strangle you to death right now, I've got complete immunity. How do you know I won't lie my way out of it? I could say anything I want, no one could get me on perjury. I'm already doing time. I could destroy a major star system on my last day of prison and all you judiciaries would be aspowerless as you are now."

"It doesn't matter if you have immunity. It doesn't matter if you've already made your statements. Speaking of which, you must have made several hours' worth of testimony to the SA. Do you expect this jury to listen to your entire life story, including the parts that don't pertain to this case?"

"I suppose not. Alright, I'll testify."

"Splendid. Bailiff, you may now swear in the witness."

The bailiff nodded and grabbed the grey book from the defense table.

"Nebula or cosmos?"

"Nebula."

"Which?"

"Stingray."

"Planet?"

"Panussia VIII."

"Country?"

"Pulmenti."

"No record."

"Try 'Peoples Republic of Pulmeti'."

"Match. Okay. Religion?"

"Viatoran."

The book changed just like before. Its cover changed to a rough, rocky beige exterior with the title λιτξλιξκιηδ.

"Place your hand on this Duxinon and repeat after me."

"That brings back memories too."

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Guuuuuultek."

"As do I. Can we got on with this?"

"Right. Go ahead, your honour."

"Mr. Sectoral Attorney, you may begin."

The SA approached the bench.

"What is your relationship with the defendant?"

"If I told you that, I'd have to kill you."

"Is that a wise move?"

"Very well. I was part of a secret coalition to discover who was the ruler of the universe alongside Beeblebrox the first."

"But...it's impossible to know that."

"Oh, we found out."

"You did not."

"Want to bet?"

"Must I?"

"I remember everything about him."

"You lie."

"I remember everything. His cat, his hair, his home—"

"Oh, really?"

"The Lord. Straw. A shack. On the sea."

Ford Prefect nodded with memories of England. "Ah, Straw-shack-on-the-sea...marvelous cod."

"How did you know that?"

"Aha! It's true!"

"Oh, hell, of course it's true! What does that mean to any of these people?"

"But it means a lot to you, you're the Sectoral Attorney of half the galaxy. You need to know these things."

"The point is that's impossible. I can't fathom how you found this out."

"Beeblebrox. He did it all. He was president, he had power that you all forgot to remove when the empire ended."

"But Beeblebrox was just president! Not Prime Minister, Premier, Chairman, any of the positions that even slightly _matter_."

"You haven't considered the possibility that the president is just _pretending_ to be a figurehead?"

"We _do_ have screening test to make sure."

"Imbecile! You only elect people who are well known so as to not arouse suspicion. But how did they get famous?"

"How should I know?"

"It takes more than talent and charm to become a celebrity! What did Beeblebrox ever do?"

"He was a thief!"

"And how did he do that thievery? Do you think a child of thirty-two years could hijack a megafreighter on a triscooter?"

"Hey, man, give me some credit!" shouted Zaphod.

"He had outside help!"

"He was with his cousin!"

"Not much help!"

"Hey!" shouted Zaphod again. "Ford was—uh—"

"No, he's right, I wasn't much help," called Ford.

"Why do you think he hijacked Yooden Vranx's ship?"

"Chance!"

"Kidneys! He knew Vranx knew nothing about politics but was such a bloodthirsty brute that he was in a position of relative _power_, a perfect candidate for the presidency!"

"He couldn't have known that."

"Then how did he? How did he _by chance_ meet the next president of the galaxy? The one who told him about how no one would expect the president in a trillion years to know anything about the loopholes his position had?"

"Impossible!"

"The former emperor had more power than the Prime Minister and the Chairman combined, but most of his decisions were handled by his council, the highest of which was the Presider of the Empire, which evolved into the President! But you federals didn't want to have the possibility of losing power, so the president became a figurehead."

"Be that as it may..."

"And you were one of them. The longest SA in the Galacticon. Ha! You're the first SA not to have been on the Imperial Privy Council. You learned everything from the previous one, Nolk Flishen was it? You learned the power of the Galaxy's Sectoral Attorney—the one with the power to turn legislation to decree from the emperor. The Atturner of the Empire. And where did it go? Here. You have to know these things _to keep in power_. Not like the president, but you didn't realize that the constitution guaranteed the president such high power. And the only one who could change that article was the president himself _on advice_ of the senate. And so the president never lost any power, you only had to hope he wouldn't know this himself!"

The SA frowned. "How dare you notice that!"

"But Vranx and Beeblebrox both knew how much power they had, and they'd been using it the entire time!"

"But no one has enough power to discover—"

"That's what they wanted you to think!"

"But _we_ were the ones who wanted _them_ to think things!"

"Aha! The wanter become the wanted!"

"What are you talking about?"

"The point is, we know the only power you have is to pretend you're not in power. Of course, the power you're pretending to not have is just the power to know who's actually in power, which is neither you nor the ones you're pretending are in power."

"Very astute of you. But I'm afraid this cannot do."

"Yes? And what will you do?"

"I can remind you that the only thing keeping you from the So-So Beyond is the precious immunity that I can revoke at any second."

"Your honour, I would like my past twenty-three comments as well as this one stricken from the record."

Judiciary Terenax frowned. "You know I can't do that unless the person you were talking to also—"

"And I would like all my comments, since the first comment the witness requested stricken, to be stricken."

"Very well. The comments are stricken."

"Now," said the SA, "despite the fact that I just asked you this question and neither you nor I have said anything between my previous comment and this current comment, what is your relationship with the defendant?"

"I was part of a secret coalition to discover who was the ruler of the universe alongside Beeblebrox the first."

"And did you succeed?"

"Heavens no. If we had, I'd be able to tell you his hair was black, his cat was named Stavro and that he lived in a trailer by the woods. But I can't because I don't know that."

"How did Beeblebrox help this coalition?"

"Oh, well, he looked through all kinds of government archives once he was elected. And he sealed off parts of his brain so that the screening tests wouldn't catch it."

"I believe that's highly felonious."

"Well, all you have to prove it is my testimony, and I'm a chronic liar."

"Ah, very good, I'll just indite you for perjury—"

"No wait, it's the truth! He sealed it off so he wouldn't be impeached."

"This was before he stole the _Heart of Gold_?"

* * *

"_Allegedly_ stole the—!" started Aile Salmenta, until Zaphod punched him in what had been a neck moments before evolution. 

"Ow! What was that for?"

"Just shut up, alright?"

"That really hurt..."

"Be quiet!"

* * *

"Yes, this was before he stole the ship." 

"So you admit he stole it?"

"Yes."

"The _Heart of Gold_?"

"Right."

"The Galactic Imperial Starship _Heart of Gold_?"

"That one."

"Why would you divulge such information when the defendant would appear to be your compatriot?"

"Surely you're not suggesting honour justifies perjury?"

"Not at all. Was the theft of the _Heart of Gold_ part of this plan?"

"That it was."

"Why was the ship necessary to your cause?"

"Understand, the man you know as Zaphod Beeblebrox may be the same person he appeared to be to the public his entire life, but years ago when we were organizing this thing he was a genius in private. He had adopted this hippie, foolhardy space pirate wannabe look _after_ his meeting with one of our future co-conspirators, so not only would he be elected president but he would never be thought as someone who understood the powers he should've but didn't, or shouldn't have but did, have. After that operation, though, his mind sealed off the thoughts of conspiracy into his subconscious. This new persona was destined to steal the ship and use its unique ability to travel through spacetime and logically end up somewhere that could only be reached by time travel. And he did—Milliways. And in a place that could only be reached by time travel, there were bound to be teleports all over the place, and he was bound to use one. All we had to do then was focus a point of extreme hypermagnetism that would attract a teleport's guidance portal (i.e. the virtual universe we set up at the offices of the _Hitchhiker_'_s Guide to the Galaxy_) and then—"

"The what?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Something about a galaxy."

"Er... _Hitchhiker_'_s Guide to the_?"

"Yes, that's it."

"Well, it's a—um, never mind. Anyway, Beeblebrox would be attracted by the magnetism and he would end up at least on the same planet as one of our associates. In this case, Zarniwoop Van Harl."

"Who?"

"Well, he's not anymore, but that's not important. But does that answer your question?"

"I suppose. How did you first join this coalition to find the ruler of the universe?"

"By accident, actually. I was hitchhiking a few years ago around the Arcturos system and I ended up on Yooden Vranx's ship. He didn't much like hitchhikers and he had me brought to him so I could explain what I was doing there. I told him about how I was a research scout for the _Hitchhiker_'_s Guide to the Galaxy_ and he seemed fine with that. We got to talking and he said he wanted to be president some day. I told him the position had no power whatsoever and it'd be hard to be more of a figurehead than if you became President of the Galaxy. He didn't declare my madness nor said madness' barking-ity like most people but told me he knew that. He said he was organizing a kind of task force with a Megabrantis Hold 'Em buddy from Betelgeuse to find out who was actually the leader of the executive branch. He then told me this power extended beyond the Empire and into the isolated governments around the third galactic disc. He explained that he had a theory that this power controlled every individual government in the Galaxy, and possibly even others—perhaps even the universe itself. I told him I had a _Guide_ ID card and I could get all kinds of services and goods and general preferential treatment in places all around the Galaxy, which could help him research information pertaining to his...er…cause."

"What kind of information did you allow access for Captain Vranx?"

"Nothing, actually. I was trying to upload the ID code to the ship's mainframe so Vranx could use the card's abilities when I wasn't available when a nearby electromagnetic supernova shorted out all the ship's computational systems. The card's magnetic field was desensitized and rendered useless. I stayed on the ship for a few weeks after that, deciding what to do with myself. This was when a young Beeblebrox and a semi-cousin of his boarded the ship, pretending to be pirates. Vranx somehow found out that he was the great grandson of his co-conspirator from Betelgeuse, who told him that the boy was foolish in that special kind of way in which the capacity for genius was hidden just inside his inner cortex, like an untapped hyper-oil well. He told Vranx to shower the boy with food, alcohol, and some kind of nut the boy insisted he was after on his piratical raid. This kindness would cause young Beeblebrox to remember Vranx, so he would listen to him if Vranx ever visited him again. And he did, just before he died. But really, his entire first acquaintanceship with Beeblebrox is just hearsay from some other crewmembers; I had accidentally locked myself in the brig and spent the entire time down there."

"Accidentally locked in the brig?"

"Yes. I managed to get myself out by picking the lock. It was a very complicated lock, though, utilizing different kinds of techniques from all sorts of lock makes. In fact, after I got myself out of there, I became quite the locksmith—a talent that would later prove worthy to our cause."

"Which brings me to my next questions. On how many occasions have you and the defendant met?"

"Twice."

"Describe your meetings. Omit nothing."

"The first meeting was when Vranx introduced me to him during their meeting at Beeblebrox's summer home on Salerin IX, just before Vranx's death. I didn't talk to him much, and mostly just observed Vranx's talk with him, explaining our plan and such. They talked for an hour and a half and then him and I left."

"What were your impressions of Beeblebrox then?"

"He was quite intelligent. Very clever; the type of person I wouldn't dare face at chess. His attitude towards Vranx's theories about the federal government of the Galaxy having no actual power, and that said power was actually wielded by the ruler of much more than just our Galaxy, was that he had long suspected something similar and was glad to see someone else that shared his ideas. That's pretty much all I got from Beeblebrox."

* * *

Over at the bench, Zaphod Beeblebrox thought to himself, "Man, I must have been a real froog back then."

* * *

"I suppose that answers my question...please describe your later meeting with the defendant." 

"Very well. Our second meeting was simple and lasted about thirteen minutes. I remembered him from years before, but he couldn't remember me less. As per instructions I had been given by Vranx years ago, I hitched a ride to Ursa Minor Beta and made my way to the offices of Megadodo Publications Ltd."

"Come again?"

"Megadodo Publications. They're a publishing house that headed the _Hitchhiker_'_s Guide_."

"Now, you keep mentioning this _Hitchhiker_'_s Guide to the Galaxy_, but I'm unaware of what exactly this is. Could you please shed some light for this court?"

"Well, it's long gone by now. Every possible copy, manuscript or text of it has been either deleted or destroyed. I couldn't possibly begin to explain what it was but suffice it to say it was a book; a guide book, I suppose you'd say. A travel book. Anyway, I headed to the offices of Megadodo Publications, which was already being attacked by a fleet of Frogstar fighters attempting to capture Beeblebrox."

Aile Salmenta stood up and shouted, "Your honour, may I remind this court that the commanders of that fleet were attempting to persecute my client without due cause?"

"Noted," said the judge. "Continue, Mr Neffa."

"Right. So, I went into the office building and found Beeblebrox on the thirtieth floor. I think there was a robot with him, but it left soon after. I led Beeblebrox into the office of Zarniwoop, the company's head editor. Little did he know that the office was actually the entrance point of a universe-wide virtual map Zarniwoop had set up for research. The Frogstar fighters erected a force beam system around the building and uprooted it in order to bring it to Frogstar World B, where Beeblebrox was to be fed into the Total Perspective Vortex as punishment. My first task was to make sure Beeblebrox entered the office in order for him to enter the virtual universe. This would mean Beeblebrox's time in the Vortex would actually be part of the virtual universe, and thus the torture would be virtual, and the damage to Beeblebrox would be on the whole non-existent. After a short voyage from Ursa Minor Beta to the Frogstar, I left Zarniwoop's office before Beeblebrox could. I then employed my locksmitherary talents to lock the office's door with extreme speed. This ensured Beeblebrox left the room through the window and stayed within the virtual universe, presumably to leave it later after his meeting on the Frogstar with Zarniwoop; I'm not precisely sure how. I left the building and hitched a ride on a passing police cruiser. Unfortunately, I was wanted on seven counts of larceny by then and was promptly arrested. I never saw or heard of Beeblebrox, or indeed any other of the conspirators, until now."

"I see. What were your impressions of Beeblebrox during your second meeting?"

"He had absolutely no concept or understanding of any one of many, many things that even remotely fit the description of the phrase _the big picture_. He was fixated on fulfilling and attending to whatever needs or desires he had at that moment. I tried telling him about the dangers of the Total Perspective Vortex and he just wondered if there was any food on Frogstar World B. I tried telling him about his quest to meet the ruler of the universe and he just wondered if said ruler could cook."

"In your opinion, does the defendant strike you as someone who would steal the _Heart of Gold_ without lawful excuse, as he is accused of?"

"That is correct, yes."

"And does the defendant strike you as someone who could commit any or all of the other crimes he stands charged with by this court?"

"Affirmative."

"And would you say that the instructions given by President Vranx to Beeblebrox intrinsically included actions that, under the standards of law then and now enacted and upheld by the judiciary and legislative branches of the Galactic Imperial Federal Government, are felonious, misdemeanorial, or otherwise illegal?"

"Yes, I would."

"And finally, will you testify, under oath, before this court, that these actions, illegal and otherwise, were carried out in full by the defendant, in conjunction with the charges brought forth to the defendant by this court?"

"Indeed I would."

"Let it stand that the defendant's co-conspirator has testified that the defendant's actions were illegal, and that he did indeed steal the _Heart of Gold_. No further questions."

* * *

The long tram rapidly rolled across the cold pavement. 

About six cars long, the tram was used for the express purpose of returning prisoners to the holding building.

At this moment, Zaphod Beeblebrox was one of the passengers on the tram, which is a stunning coincidence as he happens to be a major part of this story's plot.

Zaphod then leaped out of his seat and jumped out onto the pavement. He walked for a few seconds and, by a stunning coincidence that was only different in that it is neither stunning nor a coincidence, found himself next to Zarniwoop, whom he had noticed while on the tram.

"Hey, you, the publisher!" he shouted. "What's your deal, man? You say you're first name's Downid, which is weird because you used to say your last name was Van Harl. Since you said that at least one of your names was Zarniwoop both times, you'll appreciate my confusion. So is Zarniwoop your first or last name? And what's with the change? In fact, why are you even here? I thought you were a Vogon in disguise? Come to think of it, how could you be a Vogon on Ursa Minor Beta when you were an Ursa Minor Betan on that planet with the shack? What's more, how were you on Ursa Minor and the shack place at the same time?"

"Well, er, there's a very simple explanation to all those questions," said Zarniwoop, "and it is this. Hey, look, is that Hotblack Desiato?"

"Oh god, where?" shouted Zaphod, turning around. No one was there.

Zaphod turned around and gasped. "He's gone! Oh, wait, no he's not, he's just standing slightly to the left."

"You'd be surprised how often that works, you really would."

"Any chance of those questions being answered?"

"I have several hundred stock bonds ready to be wired to your account on Lilidadum XIV that say you never asked me them."

"Asked you what?"

* * *

Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent sat in one of the CFLEC's cafeterias, sipping on warm orange bubbly liquids and biting into cold lumpy things that looked like blue pickles. 

"Ford," said Arthur, "I'm confused. Why did that prosecutor not know what the _Hitchhiker_'_s Guide to the Galaxy_ is? I thought it was a well-known work."

"Right. It _was_. I found out some months before I got to Lamuella. Zarniwoop got the idea that it'd be much more profitable if instead of selling the _Guide_ a few billion times right here, they just make one copy, find a carrier from an appropriate nexus point, and then sell it in infinite parallel universes. But that nexus was actually Earth, and when it was destroyed by the Vogons, the _Guide_ extrapolated the destruction over every other universe. Apparently, one of the Vogons must have owned the one copy of the _Guide_ and used it to destroy all the other Earths. Turns out the destruction of the nexus took the one _Guide_ with it."

"So, what, the _Guide_ is gone?"

"Afraid so. Every time it's updated, the sub-etha net usually uploads the new version to all the other copies. This time, it had to be a new carnation to keep wavelength with all the other universes. Remember that black bird?"

"It rings a bell, yes."

"That was the latest version. When the _Guide_ left book form, all the previous copies shut down and dismantled themselves. I might even still have a copy, but useless doesn't even cover it now. All the sub-etha circuits are shot. It's not just dismantled, all traces of the _Guide_'s straight out of it; it's just a blank computer with no data, as if no one's ever even put any programming on it. And the next version's shut down too. That means the _Hitchhiker_'_s Guide to the Galaxy_ is no more."

"Pity. Other than the parts where it leaves out the bits where you get horribly eaten by some equally horrible monster, it was actually only a slight inconvenience."

Ford sipped his drink. "Aye, that it was...Arthur, why are you humming a wedding march?"

"It was actually _Danny Boy_. It's a funeral march."

"Not to the people of Karakupek VIII."

"I'm assuming it's a funeral march to them?"

"It must be, in at least one multiverse. I wouldn't know, I've never been."

"Ford, have you ever considered not assuming everyone around you has abandoned any principle or constant of regular social discourse?"

"Why, what's it like?"

* * *

Author's Notes: What's with the no reviewing lately? Review this story! I commandeth thee! 


	21. Two Years in the Making

Author's Notes: Er, sorry for the two-year delay. I hope this one single chapter makes up for the wait.

What? Don't laugh. It could happen. This could be a really good chapter.

Fine. You're probably right. Just read it, will you?

* * *

**Main Gate to GFLEC Witness Lodgings**

**Damogran**

**August 12, 2011**

"On behalf of the extremely handsome and highly underpaid Systems Office employee who designed the computer program that is dictating this message, welcome to the Galactic Federal Law Enforcement Center, the main offices of the Galactic Imperial Ministry of Justice, Judiciary, Jurisprudence and Judicature. Please dictate your voice-activated password."

"Why don't you make me?"

"Password not found. Please speak clearly and naturally."

"Go ride a comet."

"_Password found with minor vocal discrepancy. Did you mean to say: 0X3JD8S94KO?"_

"How should I know? You're the computer."

"_Password 0X3JD8S94KO is correct. Access to GFLEC offices granted."_

"Well, duh."

* * *

"You're not supposed to be here, are you? Am I right? I'm probably right."

"Yes, you're right, I'm not supposed to be here."

"I suppose it's my duty as a robotic servant such as I am to try to dissuade you from being here. What shall I say?"

"I suggest, 'Go away you stranger, you're not welcome here'."

"That will have to do. I say, go away you stranger, you're not welcome here. Was that in accordance with your expectation?"

"I suppose, if but for that I didn't have very narrow expectations."

"Quite. Oh, woe is me.

"Er, I said _woe is me_...

"Well, aren't you going to ask me why woe should damnably chose to be me?"

"No, for one only asks why woe happens to be someone one is talking to, if one intends to cheer up the woeful person. However, you are a robot. Robots lead lives that are virtual, unchanging, and virtually unchanging. Thus one should have no discernable or conceivable cause for depression or unhappiness. From this I can assume that the only possible way that you, as a robot, _could_ be depressed is if you were programmed as such. You, I have thus concluded, were programmed to be depressed, and thus cannot be convinced to be otherwise or somehow accidentally affect such a state, and as such I have no cause to attempt to cheer you up and thus no cause to ask you why woe is you."

"Good answer. I admit defeat and will now shut off. I _would_ request that you seriously consider my previous request to leave these premises as you are not allowed, but I don't want to."

Marvin, for it was indeed he, then shut himself off.

The stranger was Kareshi Reening, a strange looking man if there ever was one—which there was. Many of them. He was one of them.

Reening was strange-looking in that his ears extended out to meet with his brow in a kind of land bridge of cartilage that both extended his ear drums for optimum hearing and held up his eyes for optimum viewing of the world around him when not, at the moment, blinking or removing one or two of his eyes surgically.

Reening walked through the hallway with determined trepidation. He reached the door he had been looking for and turned the knob.

"_Security clearance required,"_ said the computer in the knob.

"Let me in," commanded Reening.

"_Security clearance required,"_ repeated the knob.

"Contemplate man's dichotomy of morality," commanded Reening.

"_Does not compute,"_ said the machine, and then it exploded. Reening used this trick on most security computers he needed to bypass that weren't too stupid to assume he had actually said the password himself.

The door was now unlocked. Reening pushed it open.

Ford Prefect, for it was indeed he, heard the sound of the door and launched into an unconscious reflex, wherein he held out his arms to the left at parallel angles and cupped them as if holding a tube of some kind. The position looked like he was holding an invisible baseball bat. This reflex worked very well during the lengthy period of time when Ford Prefect slept with a large bat next to him, but it went rather to waste the day he lost his bat.

"Look alive, Prefect!"

Ford woke up.

"Maximegalon's ghost, what's going on here?" he murmured as performed the aforementioned up-waking.

At first, Ford Prefect only saw shapes. One shape was that of a man with a peculiarly shaped face. At this, all the other images poured into Ford's eyes like salt through a sieve.

"Preztel Face?" murmured the journalist. His words travelled through the darkness. They travelled long and hard, made many friends, had delightful adventures, and left any possible audience of a film based on the words' life feeling reassured and content to see more films by the same studio. This, however, is not the story of those words, it is the story of what happened _after_ them, or rather after they reached the unusually pretzel-shaped ears of Kareshi Reening. Not that these words had much of an effect on what happened after them. As it happens, they had little more effect on the events after them as did the words spoken immediately after by Reening—or as Ford Prefect referred to him, Pretzel Face.

These words in question were, "Right as a pundit and twice as ugly!"

"What are you doing here?" murmured Ford. His voice was slurred, as fatigue caused his tongue to be hung over his lips, and his alcoholism caused his brain to be hung over his comprehension.

"That's not the question!"

Ford frowned. "How is it not a question?"

"The question is, what are _you_ doing here?"

"I was sleeping."

"Can't imagine why."

"I'd like to continue doing so."

"Sleep is for losers."

"I don't care, I still want to."

"I don't keep losers on my payroll."

"Then take me off it, I'm going to sleep."

"How will you make any money, then?"

"I don't know, I'll sleep on it! Go away!"

"Afraid not, Prefect. As you know, your contract hasn't expired. I'm still your boss."

"Who are you, again?"

"You don't remember who I am?"

"Well, I do, but tell me anyway."

"I'm an Associate Editor at Infinidim Enterprises, in charge of overseeing all reference work written about or in regards to the Orion Spur, and that means you."

"Oh, right, _that_'s who you are. Well, I knew that…"

"Then why'd you ask?"

"Dunno. All seems a bit extemporaneous now."

"Yes, it does. Anyway, you're still on the job."

"I quit."

"Your contact has a no-quitting clause."

"I ripped up my contract."

"That doesn't work in real life."

"It doesn't?"

"Anyway—"

"Wait, aren't I fired? I mean, I _did_ break into Halfrunt's office…and steal that _Guide_ 2.0…and accidentally ship it to the daughter of a friend of mine millions of light years away…"

"Well—"

"…who then accidentally destroyed the Guide and every single copy of it in all conceivable dimensions and realities…"

"Yes, the board was a tad miffed about that whole destroying-our-entire-stock affair..."

"So am I fired?"

"No."

"How?"

"You gave us the perfect opportunity to get working on a Guide 3.0!"

"But how? All your microprocessors were destroyed when Saquo-Pilia Hensha perished last year in warfare or natural disaster or something."

"Yes, I'll admit, it was a bad idea storing our microprocessors on the same CPU as our financial records whilst being perfectly aware that all the planets we set up our financial records on soon after perish in warfare or natural disaster or the like..."

"Yes, it was."

"And I'll also admit it was a bad idea not making some kind of copy or a backup for all of the information we store in the _Guide_ in case our sub-etha microprocessors were ever destroyed…"

"…by warfare or natural disaster or the like…"

"…and we lose all the information that's ever been written for the _Guide_. Yes, I know. Bad idea. My idea, in fact. Anyway, we got it all back."

"How?"

"It was all lined out in a report compiled by one of our employees."

"And what did it say?"

"Dunno. Bloke had a heart attack and died before he could finish it."

"So am I fired or not?"

"Not by a long shot."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"What if it's a _really_ long shot?"

"Nope."

"I mean a really, hugely,_ gigantically_ long shot?"

"Not a chance."

"I don't think you're comprehending just how _long_ this shot is…"

"My point is, I'm commissioning _you_ to write the _Guide_'s article on Beeblebrox's trial."

"Really? What's it pay?"

"Well, it—"

"Wait a second, I forgot. I hate the _Guide_! With all its ruddy political correct…ness."

"Too bad. You're working for us! Now get to it! Chip chop chip!" barked Reening. He barked everything. His wife didn't let him sing their baby to sleep anymore.

* * *

The year was 2005. Not a good year for productivity.

Times had changed since the care-free, idealistic days of 1988. Computers were faster. Music was louder. Pizzerias could finally be found in London that delivered their products to peoples' homes.

A wise man once said, "Those who fail history—how does the rest of that saying go?"

These words rang particularly true for an old wizened one-eyed deity who found himself standing in a field outside Glastonbury.

He had just spent seventeen years sleeping in a hospital bed, penniless, and very tired. His monotony was only broken when a woman from New York in her late forties named Kate Schechter arrived at the hospital to visit a friend of hers, an EKG repairman who had been confronted with a particularly frustrating case and needed a shoulder to cry on.

After sneaking off to the morgue and hiding in a freezer for a week, he was successfully able to avoid the American girl by cleverly posing as a man who liked freezers. When the EKG repairman realized his true calling and left to pursue a career as an MRI repairman, and Kate left with him, the old man was reminded of how long he had actually been sleeping in that hospital bed. For a brief moment, he wished he was the kind of immortal who considered a period like seventeen years to be a mere second compared to how long he had already lived.

No. This man was the kind of immortal who considered seventeen years to _still_ be seventeen years.

He needed a vacation. He needed to escape to a place where he used to live.

And thus, he found himself standing on a hill called Glastonbury Tor, a desolate lump of dirt deep in the Somerset moors. He looked up and examined an ugly stone structure, a tiny grey tower jutting up from the knoll like a mountaineer's flag on the top of a very small mountain.

Four walls, three stories high, completely hollow, a few embrasures...this was all that remained of the behemoth that once lay there: a gigantic imposing castle, a mile high, fifteen miles long and ten miles broad, sixty parapets, twenty courtyards, ten keeps, five enceintes, fifteen gatehouses, three moats, forty tennis courts (ten of them used as the seat of revolutionary parliaments)...it could be seen from a hundred miles away.

It was used, at various points in what English-speaking people call _time_, as the meeting place of the Æsir of Valhalla (which the old man had been head of), then the curia of Joseph of Arimathea, then the seat of the Avalon Court of King Arthur, the seat of the Yorks during the Wars of the Roses, finally confiscated during the Dissolution of the Monarchies, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again by the same people who destroyed it the first time, rebuilt once more, destroyed a third time and finally rebuilt by completely new people who thought the building looked nice, and finally left to rot in the middle of this field.

The old man shivered.

"You," he called in a thick Nordic accent to a disappointed English tourist. "What's this building called?"

The tourist glanced at a travel book in his hand. "St Michael's Tower."

"St Michael?" repeated the old man. "Why is it named after him? I'm the one who built this place."

"Right. This thing was built in 1365."

"And who do you think supervised construction? I think I still own the lease on this land."

"Hm. I'm going to leave."

"Snooty English, think they're so un-invadable. I'll turn you into a jet fighter or something!"

The old man stared at the hill for three days straight, not moving once, not breathing or blinking. He didn't need to blink, though sometimes he did anyway. Unlike Earth-humans, he only blinked and breathed voluntarily, and only when he wanted to. He didn't really like to blink or breathe, but occasionally it felt nice. Like exercise. But not now. He stared at the hill for the longest time, as still as the tower before him—even though the tower was technically hurtling through space at twelve million miles a second, along with everything else in the universe. Anyway.

During his sojourn, the old man didn't notice a flying saucer sink down from the clouds and land on the ground below. He didn't notice a man in an expensive suit and a goatee rush out from the saucer hatch, nor did he notice the smartly dressed man opening up a large briefcase, pull out a shiny computer terminal, push it up against the West Portal of the small church tower, pull out a collapsible wide-screen computer monitor from his briefcase, unfold it, affix it to one of the walls of the church, and begin uploading hundreds of years of an intergalactic reference work's financial records.

"What are you doing to my castle?" shouted the old man.

"I'm making it the center of our operational processor," the snazzily dressed man explained. "This planet is going to be the new home of the financial records of the _Hitchhiker_'_s Guide_."

"Which hitchhiker?"

"_Hitchhiker_'_s Guide to the Galaxy_. No? Never heard of it? Well, this is a first…they've chosen an uninhabited planet to set up the computers."

"I don't think this planet is uninhabited."

"Eh? There's people here? Damn. For a second there, I thought maybe we might've found the one planet to put or financial department that _wouldn_'_t_ soon after perish in warfare, natural disaster, et cetera."

"I wouldn't put it past these people."

"Hm. Oh, well, no matter. Can you help me roll out this spool of wiring from the craft?"

"Um, yes, certainly."

"You wouldn't happen to know if any wars or disasters are scheduled in the near future?"

"No, I'm just a god."

"Ah. Great, all rolled out. I'll wire in this circuit breaker, and could you go fetch that wave transmitter?"

As soon as the old man grabbed the transmitter, it began picking up radio signals. This was not to be expected as it only picked up wavelengths around a billion times smaller than any human-made receivers could pick up.

This was because the message was tailor-made to override any conceivable communication devices found within a trillion square kilometer radius of its point of broadcast. If you're confused, let me explain by telling you that the signal sounded like this:

"_People of Earth. This is Protestnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. Your planet is scheduled for demolition._"

"Damn!" shrieked the sharply dressed man. "Demolition! Another planet gone! Why does this keep happening!"

The impeccably dressed man packed up his computing devices and machinery in his briefcase, hurried off to the spaceship, and flew off. Incidentally, his ship's navigational equipment would soon after be completely fried from the huge static shock of hydrogen that hit it when the Earth exploded. His craft would lose control and crash into a Vogon ship immediately after. He would die. But this is beside the point.

The old man, as it happens, survived. As soon as Captain Jeltz expressed his lack of sympathy at all for the Earth, the weary deity snapped his fingers and disappeared to Valhalla. He would once try to return to Earth many millennia later, only to find it had been replaced by a large empty space. He was soon after destroyed, as he had returned at the exact moment that the star Sol chose to supernova.

Is there a point to this story?

Absolutely.

Was this point _in_ the story?

No. No it wasn't.

* * *

It was the day of Ford Prefect's testimony, and Gag Halfrunt's various assassination attempts were not faring well.

He had decided that Ford would be the easiest to kill out of the three he was targeting. Two humans, clever, aloof, aware—against one Betelgeusian, stupid, foolish, reckless—

Yes, Prefect would die first.

He tried electrifying the door knob in Ford's room. He tried poisoning Ford's water bottle. He tried detonating a car bomb in the tram Ford took to the courthouse. These plans were all foiled, because this was the day that Ford decided to walk to the courthouse, steal someone else's water bottle, and break in his new morning-wear rubber gloves.

How could he accomplish his goal?

"How can I accomplish my goal?" asked Gag.

He was speaking over the phone very secretly to Curt Dosenifeg, his psychologist co-conspirator.

"As your co-conspirator," said Curt, "I must express my lack of sureness."

"Isn't _co-conspirator_ a tad redundant?" questioned Gag. "I mean, the word 'conspirator' implies working with other people. That's what a conspiracy is, working with other people."

"Hmm. I see your point. Kind of like saying 'co-partner'."

"Yes, exactly."

"Alright, I'll stop saying 'co-conspirator'."

"Splendid. Now, how do I kill Prefect?"

"As your conspirator, I'm not sure. It will have to be something clever."

"Cunning."

"Sly."

"Devious."

"Well, I don't think the synonyms will help us."

"They _could_."

"I suppose. Anyway, I should try it at his testimony. Right before, or during."

"You could try lacing the oath book with derma poison?"

"Or put a bomb in the stand microphone?"

"Or drop one of the ceiling lamps on him as he approaches the bench?"

"Could we actually set that up?"

"Of course. This is a government office, there's no security here."

"How could I forget."

"Okay, who's testifying today?"

"I think it's that robot."

"Alright, I'll see if I can catch a ride down to GFLEC tomorrow. Sit tight."

* * *

In the interest of preventing readers of this text who suffer from any kind of stress disorders, high anxiety conditions or nervous panic attacks, let it be that in the name of doing away with nasty realities like apprehension and waiting periods, it shall be revealed that Ford Prefect will indeed be dead by the end of this story.

Didn't see that one coming, did you?

* * *

But Ford was not dead yet. Believe me, when he's dead, _you_'_ll know_. Until then, he remained in his hotel room, staring at a blank screen.

He had to write an entire article on the trial of Zaphod Beeblebrox. What could he say? Would he tell the straight truth? Cast Zaphod in a favourable light and honour their familiar ties? Cast Zaphod in a critical light and give the people what they wanted to read about? Or perhaps just give the straight facts and make nobody happy?

Maybe he could just do what reporters always do, and give an equal amount of blatant positive bias and blatant negative bias in the hopes that they cancel each other out and no one notices. Yes, that seems like a good idea.

**ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX GRAND THEFT CASE**

_The __**Zaphod Beeblebrox grand theft case**__ is an ongoing Galactic Commonwealth criminal trial (Gal v. Beeblebrox 42 Gal C.C.R. 180 GC) in which former President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox is charged primarily with the hijacking and theft of a federal starcraft, the G.I.S. _Heart of Gold_. On July 22, 2742, at its official launching ceremony on the planet Damogran, then-President Beeblebrox was set to launch the _Heart of Gold_ and fly it several times around the France archipelago, and then back to the spaceport for an after-party of iced tea and finger sandwiches. However, Beeblebrox instead chose to steal the ship because_

Ford stopped. He couldn't think of what to write next.

_I_'_m in way over my head_, he thought. _I need a drink_.

To be fair, Ford was _always_ thinking 'I need a drink', and it doesn't need to be specified that was thinking it at this particular moment. Just so you know.

* * *

"I used to be a reporter, you know."

"Ah, yes, I'm know. I saw you on the tri-D wave thing, covering that marriage between Prince Git and Princess Hoopy."

"Gid and Hoodi. Ah, it doesn't matter anymore, the royal family's already been overthrown."

"Has it now."

"Yes. Pity."

"Er...a friend of mine was telling me about you. Saying about how you're all over the continuum these days."

"Hm."

"He said it'd all end in tears."

"Did he."

"Said it probably already did."

"Yes, and I've just stopped crying now."

"Is that a joke?"

"Yes. You don't have to laugh."

"You know, the network is probably pretty annoyed at you leaving your dimension to come here."

"What, NBS?"

"I'm sorry?"

"NBS?"

"No, I meant the outer space network. When did you work for NBS?"

"On Earth. No? Don't remember?"

"Er...?"

"I was an anchor on NBS News for years, Arthur."

"No...you were an anchor _in space_ for years."

"Well—I'm not certain I remember that."

"Um...oh, wait, this is what Ford was talking about!"

"What is it?"

"All about how that whole time travel thing merged your two selves."

"Time travel thing? Which one?"

"The one in New York, right before the demolition."

"I…think I remember that."

"Huh. I can imagine it would all be a bit confusing for you. I mean, it's not every day one lives in a universe where two versions of oneself inexplicably co-exist on alternate planes of temporal reality, only to have the two versions somehow splice during retroactive posthumous time travel."

"Arthur…did you just…_understand_ how the universe works?"

"Um…oh, dear, yes I did…"

"But isn't that—impossible?"

"Very."

There was a brief silence.

"I'm scared, Tricia."

"I'm scared too, Arthur."

"Hold me, Tricia."

"I'd rather not."

"Understandable."

* * *

"Hey."

Nothing.

"Hey!"

No response.

"You! Cat with the beard!"

Nothing.

"Don't I know you? I'm pretty sure I know you."

Pause.

"Yeah, yeah, you're that guy who rules the universe. How's that going?"

Still nothing.

"Did they give you a truth serum?"

"They gave me a truth serum."

"Then talk. Say something truthful."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"_Can't _is the wrong word. _Can't_ does not specify whether it is a physical inability, mental, spiritual, hypothetical..."

"Let's go with hypothetically. Why can't you hypothetically say anything truthful?"

"I know not what truth is."

"Well, um, what's a dictionary definition? I dunno: accordance with fact or reality?"

"You say fact _or_ reality."

"Fact _and_ reality."

"Are the two synonymous? Does the concept of truth link the separate concepts of fact and reality? Does truth cover the two of them?"

"Let's say truth is the _real_."

"What is reality?"

"Look, if you're gonna speak the language, you have to know what the words mean, correct?"

"Good point."

"And you must have _some_ idea of what reality is, or else you wouldn't know where in a sentence to use it. You wouldn't be talking about _reality_ in terms of _truth_ and _fact_, you'd be talking about it in terms of _where_'_s my dictionary_,_ I have to figure out what the word _'_reality_'_ means_."

"Better point."

"No. You know the word _reality_ is a singular non-proper noun, and you know that dictionaries define that word as _the state of things as they actually exist_. You know what each of those words in that definition mean. You speak the language, you know what these words mean, you can define them. With each definition naturally comes the question of what the words in these definitions mean. What is reality? Reality is actuality. What is actuality? Actuality is fact. What is fact? Fact is truth. What is truth? And you just keep going. What you have to do is think of a definition for _everything at once_. If you keep taking one idea, relating it to another idea, and then questioning that other idea, by the time you come up with a comprehension of that second idea then you've lost your comprehension of the first idea. You have to take everything all at once. When you try to answer a question, just think of the answer to every question at once, and then you'll know the answer to whatever question you've just been asked whether or not you were paying attention or not. Dig?"

"The best point of all."

"Do you think you can speak the truth now, ruler cat?"

"It's entirely possible. We shall see when I take the stand."

"Does the stand exist?"

"Absolutely it does."

"You've learned well. You know, man, if you weren't insane, you'd be a great ruler of the universe."

"And if you weren't an idiot, you'd make a great president of the galaxy."

"How did you know I was president?"

"I've heard your name shouted in angry voices as visitors storm out of my shack, cursing their luck. They say that if titular leaders like You can't solve their problems and secret leaders like Me can't solve their problems, then suicide might be a pretty good idea."

"And I'm guessing those froods pull the old biological dine-and-dash, huh?"

"So I hear."

"Far out."

The ruler of the universe sat quietly. Zaphod bit into a scotch egg.

'Biological dine-and-dash' is, incidentally, a slang term for suicide.

* * *

The sun beat down angrily on the courthouse that day. It was not angry at the courthouse in particular, but it was having a very bad day and it was lashing out at things it liked and cared about. It hadn't meant to get angry at the courthouse like it did, but sometimes it just couldn't control its anger. But it was really trying to work on it, going to anger management courses, trying out breathing exercises and everything. It had even started taking some yoga classes. Honestly, it was no big deal. The courthouse just had to trust it this time.

The sea was calm. The air was clear. The trams were explosive. Or at least one of them was.

* * *

A small armed militant group soon after stepped forward and claimed responsibility for the explosion, even though it hadn't actually done it. The government then fingered this group as the perpetrators _after_ the group said it themselves. The government then claimed they had figured this out themselves through shrewd investigation and intelligence gathering, and their discovery had nothing to do with the group admitting to it. The government then followed up this action with the amazing feat of tracking down a nice planet that one of the militants spent a summer in a few years back, blamed the government of _that_ planet for the attack, and then bombed that planet to a crisp. A new planet, designed by the galactic government, is currently in place where the old planet used to be. Some critics alleged that the new planet is merely an enlarged photograph of the old planet with the words _THIS IS A NEW PLANET_ spray-painted at the top. These critics were last seen in a shallow grave. There were no witnesses, thanks to the miracle of plausible deniability.

* * *

The beauty of this world outside was invisible inside, in the ugly courtroom. A bleak grey room with lamps and chairs and tables. Truly the worst kind of place.

Enter a familiar robot.

This robot was one of two beings in the galaxy—possibly even the universe—who knew the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

The answer is quite illusory and fickle.

One might argue, but we already know that the answer is forty-two. How can it be illusory and fickle? We know what it is. Forty-two. Four two. 42. That's it. That's the answer.

But the answer is still illusory and fickle, because if we had the question and not the answer, would we ever come up with the answer? No, we wouldn't, because it's so illusory and fickle. It doesn't matter if we know the answer. We would _never_ if we didn't, and so that makes it mysterious.

If we had the question and not the answer, could we ever answer the question? Ever?

What if we were told the question, right here, right now, would the answer stay the same? Would it change? Would the question in and of itself explain _why_ the answer had changed?

In the name of reducing apprehension, let the question be known.

* * *

**EXCEPT FROM THE DEEP THOUGHT OPERATIONAL PROGRAM RECORDS:**

_prog trans opt :_

_sic＝__download_

_answerprogram: running_

_REC:Log_〉

_COM:input_〉_ : "ultimate answer to life universe & everything"_

_prog run＝__meaning hoc/life_

_include _〈_stdio.h_〉

_#define LIFE UNIVERSE EVERYTHING_

_prog trace opt:_

_sic＝__dictionary_〈

_#define LIFE_

_life :_

_DICTIONARY §18 ‡1_

_\_

_#define UNIVERSE_

_universe :_

_DICTIONARY §15 ‡1_

_\_

_#define EVERYTHING_

_everything :_

_DICTIONARY §09 ‡1_

_printf＝__\result_

_§ 18 + 15 + 09 ＝ __§ 42_

_QUESTION OF LIFE + UNIVERSE + EVERYTHING ＝ __42_

_int main(void)_

_markf( _‰_d\n_

_#info input_〉_ ANSR :_

_input_〉_ ANSWER : # (number)_

_input_〉_ number＝__sic/random_

_prog search(random) ＝ __any #_

_random # ＝ __42_

_output_〉_ random/random #_

_prog search1＝__think of a #__number_

_prog search2＝__any #__number_

_printf＝__/__"__think of a # any #"_

_42 ＝ __define : "think of a # any #"_

_trans＝__DICT_

_prog_〉_ standard text\_

_#print answer ＝_

_Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything :_

_Think of a number, any number._

_Answer to the Ultimate Question :_

_Forty-two._

* * *

Years before, on a swampy planet called Squornshellous Zeta, a depressed robot attempted to prove his intelligence to a mattress.

"Think of a number, any number," said the robot.

"Er, five," replied the mattress.

The robot said, "Wrong. You see?"

The mattress did not see. The robot did. The correct answer would have been _forty_-_two_.

* * *

Years later, on a large starship in the great void that was the suburbs of the core of the Galaxy, a listless human complained to a sentient computer about his mild annoyance with the futility of the meaning of life.

"Presumably he would know what the Question to the Ultimate Answer is," said the human. "It's always bothered me that we never found out."

"Think of a number," said the computer, "any number."

And the human thought the computer meant a figure of improbability to be used to locate a particular very truthful man. And in a way, it did, but in another way, a more important way, it was answering the question the human had just posed. Or rather, it was answering the answer the human had just posed.

* * *

Think of a number, any number.

The answer, as we well know, is forty-two.

What if the question were '_Think of a number_,_ any number_'?

Thus, does this not mean that the answer would appear to be random?

But the answer is not random. It's forty-two. It has always been forty-two.

Forty-two was calculated by a supercomputer. For seven and a half million years. One does not take seven and a half million years to come up with a random answer. This supercomputer took seven and a half million years to come up with a non-random _correct_ answer. Forty-two.

So, can _Think of a number_,_ any number_ possibly be the question?

No, it can't. Because this question implies a random answer. But the answer is not random.

And yet here we are. We know the question is wrong. But it can't be wrong. So, has the answer changed? Perhaps the answer changes with the question, so that the question and the answer cannot exist in the same universe? Because then, for the second or third time, the universe would be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

* * *

Somewhere, deep in the heart of mind and universe, this all makes sense. But not this time. You can pretend that the nonsensical has to exist in the universe so that the sensible can exist, by contrast. This is in no way true, nor is it of bad people and good people, virtue or sin, or even right and wrong. But it's fun to pretend.

* * *

Ford Prefect was walking through the parking lot when he saw the explosion. It was brilliant, vibrant, a sparkling tableau of sound and fury.

Inside Ford's head, a war was being waged.

_Don't…turn…don't…look…at…flaming…wreckage…must…act…very…cool…_

And indeed, it would have been very cool to just keep on walking past the explosion and never glance to the side. But Ford Prefect lost the war. And, somehow, won.

"Wowee, an explosion!" shouted Ford. "Wait a nano; isn't that _my_ tram?"

He paused, and took a few steps forward.

"Hey! You! Smoldering driver! Is this the 286 to the main building?"

"N…no…this is the…ugh…180…to…the cafeteria…"

"Shame. I was just about to skip my testimony and get a light lunch. Now where will I flee to so I can bide time to think of what to have my testimony be?"

"I know not…can you…take…me to…the…hospital…wing…?"

"Fat chance. You're the driver."

Ford Prefect walked off towards the cafeteria, determined to shirk his responsibility and waste time, as the driver lay and died.

A few yards away, hiding in the artificial silicon bushes, Gag Halfrunt lay in wait. And dirt. Gag Halfrunt lay in wait and dirt.

"Curses!" howled Gag, wearing a metaphorical top hat and handlebar moustache. "He's evaded my assassination once again!"

"Who has?" asked Ford, who passed the bushes as he left the explosion site.

"Oh," said Halfrunt. "You. _You_ have evaded my assassination once again."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," said Ford politely. "Well, good luck next time."

"Can't say the same for you."

"Ha-ha! Good one. Well, happy killing."

Ford walked off jauntily across the great open square. After a few minutes, he stopped dead in his tracks.

"Wait a minute!" he shouted. He sounded incredibly nervous, like he had just missed something that would greatly affect his life in the future.

He then completed his thought.

"The cafeteria is _east_, not _north_!"

Ford turned to his right and headed down the boardwalk to the canteen building.

* * *

"Erm," commented Ford. "What a desolate cafeteria. Reminds me of college."

Desolate and collegiate it was; a beige automat topped by fluorescent lighting, gigantic grimy windows, and long steel tables stretching off into the distance like so many yo-yos dropped on the floor at a slight angle, rolling along the carpet to nowhere.

"You went to college?"

"Oh, hello, Arthur. No, I didn't go to college, but I gatecrashed a lot of parties at them."

"Yes…that is a thing that you did…"

"One time, after I got thrown out, I ended up in the cafeteria. It was a pretty uninspiring place; nothing but food left carelessly inside the locked fridge for anyone to break into and steal—and some student spree killers stopping off for a snack. Nice guys. Hey, aren't you supposed to be at that trial?"

"I learned recently that I've become oriented with the inner workings of this universe. It's very disconcerting. I need some time alone to recuperate. Alone. With others."

"It'll wear off. Come on, let's go. You can help me evade the subpoena enforcers."

"Who?"

"Them."

"Ford Prefect! Stop in the name of the law!"

"You mean stop in the name of Ford Prefect. _That_'s the name you just shouted."

"Oh. Oh I see. Stop in the name of Ford Prefect!"

"I'd rather not."

"Run, Arthur!"

"Must I?"

"Okay, fine. Distract, Arthur!"

"Very well."

Ford Prefect took of running up the stairwell and off to the skyway to the other buildings. Meanwhile, three menacing behemoths wearing blue uniforms and holding truncheons remained, glaring at Arthur.

"Well?" said one of them. "Perhaps you can't tell from my menacing glare. We're waiting for a reason why we shouldn't pursue that fugitive. Since you're still here, we're assuming you have that reason."

"Mmm…rrgh…" said Arthur. "Alright, come on, Dent, you've dealt with law enforcement in this galaxy before…you know they're all idiots…poetry-reading, slave-to-logic-ing, easily-explodable-if-they're-a-robot-ing idiots…er, hey, you, guards! What law are you enforcing?"

"Failure to submit to a subpoena."

"Erm…doesn't the basic concept of a subpoena violate the inalienable right to privacy?"

"Not good enough. We're going to shoot you now for obstructing justice."

"Well…er…you're talking to me right now, instead of catching that fugitive, and bringing him to the court, to testify, and administer justice in a legal proceeding! So, aren't you yourselves, by not trying harder to catch him, or trying at all—obstructing justice?"

"Nope. Prepare to be terminated."

"Isn't this force a little excessive?"

"Absolutely not. Powering up Kill-O-Zap."

"But isn't the monopoly over the legitimate use of force wielded by a well-established state?"

"You're in a government office. Can't get much more established than an office. Loading Kill-O-Zap."

"But…aren't there numerous planets in the Galaxy that fall under the Empire's territorial jurisdiction, but have never had contact with a Commonwealth representative and don't even know of the state's existence, and thus leave the state at least partially unestablished?"

"Nay. Those are legal enclaves. Taking safety off Kill-O-Zap."

"But those enclaves haven't even been colonized! Isn't there some kind of Manifest Destiny policy in this government?"

"Strictly isolationist. Cocking Kill-O-Zap."

"Oh…um…er…you wouldn't happen to think the minutes of this job are very lousy and you don't exactly know why you do it and might be persuaded into a career change?"

"Minutes are great. My innocent father was sent to jail because a witness at his trial skipped a subpoena, that's why I do it. Aiming Kill-O-Zap."

"Okay, now, the fugitive has almost certainly escaped by now…"

"Firing Kill-O-Zap."

There was a pause.

"Missing target with shot from Kill-O-Zap."

"Yes, well, that was fortunate. Anyway, aren't you tired of following orders? Maybe you should start doing something you really enjoy?"

"This is all I need. Re-loading Kill-O-Zap."

"Do you see a computer terminal around here? One that might transport me through time if it explodes?"

"Don't see a thing. Re-cocking Kill-O-Zap."

"This situation is degenerating very rapidly…"

"Re-aiming Kill-O-Zap."

"I can see an ending to this event that does not benefit me."

"Re-firing Kill-O-Zap."

* * *

Outside, Gag Halfrunt was confused.

"Wait a second," said Halfrunt. "If I blew up the tram to the cafeteria…but I thought Prefect would take the one to the courtroom…so I put the explosives on _another_ tram…but then why did that first one explode?"

* * *

In reality, it had exploded because a suitcase had fallen off an approaching starship, and landed on the tram engine with such speed that the spark plugs were smashed against the fuel tank, igniting the fumes and blowing up the engine.

The owner of that suitcase de-boarded the starship in the courtyard by the GFLEC offices and approached the flaming wreckage of the tram.

"So that's where that suitcase went," said the man. The conspirator, Curt Dosenifeg, picked up his piece of luggage and prepared to leave and find Gag Halfrunt.

"Please…help me," said the driver. "I'm...fairly certain…I…can still…live if I…get…medical…attention…very…soon…"

"Do you know where Gag Halfrunt or Ford Prefect are?"

"N…no…"

"You are of no use to me. Continue with your death."

_Wait a second_, thought the driver. _Ford Prefect? I think I went to high school with him. Hey, he was that guy just here a few minutes ago! He was heading towards the cafeteria!_

"Wait…a second…!" called the driver. "I know…where…Ford Prefect…is…I can direct you…to…his…exact…where…a…bout…"

Just then, before the driver could articulate the letter "s" in the last word of his last sentence ever, the flames burned through the sheet metal into the scavenger tank, which had been as of then untouched. The oil ignited and there was another small explosion, killing the driver.

* * *

Ford Prefect rushed through the tunnel high above the ground. He glanced outside the window and saw the exterior of the cafeteria. He saw a brilliant flash that he recognized as the sight of a Kill-O-Zap discharging.

"Arthur, no!" exclaimed Ford, still running. "I have to help him! Well, no, I have running to do…I have to find someone else to help him! You there! Passer-by!"

"I have a name, you know."

"Go downstairs to the cafeteria, see if anyone's dead!"

"It's Brian."

"Just go! A life is in danger!"

"Call me Brian, and maybe I'll go."

"Brian, idiot, move!"

"Hmm…I like the way you say my name, it sounds so dramatic. Bu_-riii-_yan…I'm going to start saying it like that from now on!"

Ford punched Brian in the face.

"Alright, wait a second," said Brian, rubbing one of his noses in pain. "I'll go, if you give me that jacket!"

Ford ripped off the polyester coat he was wearing and tossed it at the face of the man, who seemed quite content with this transaction. As Brian continued on down to the cafeteria, Ford ran forwards, through the tunnel doors, and into the lobby of the tenth floor of the courts building.

* * *

Just as Arthur was about to be horridly disintegrated by a very nasty weapon, a strange multi-nasalled man in an ugly coat entered the canteen from the stairwell and said, "Is anyone here dead?"

"You there!" grunted one of the officers. "That coat; you must be Ford Prefect! Get him!"

The three guards aimed their Kill-O-Zaps away from Arthur and towards the stranger.

"Prepare to open fire!" shouted the leader.

"But he's skipping out on a subpoena," said another one. "Shouldn't we just take him to the courtroom? I don't think punishment is the solution."

"You foolish fool," said the first. "Punishment is always the solution. Everyone knows, the harsher you punish criminals, the less crime there is! Why do you think there's such low crime rates on planets where they have the death penalty?"

"Um…actually, planets where they have the death penalty tend to have _more_ crime than—"

"Um, excuse me, sorry to interrupt, but, uh—shut up," said the third officer. "The fugitive is walking away slowly!"

"That's really not Ford," said Arthur.

"Then he stole that jacket," said the first guard. "After him! Stop, thief!"

"Oh, well then," said Arthur, beginning to take a few tacit steps toward the door, "I suppose I'm off the hook."

"Not quite," said the first guard. "We're just sidetracking for some reason. We'll get back to killing you in a second."

"Oh, well, if you don't mind, I think I'll be leaving now instead of waiting for my—er—impending death."

"Please, please!" shouted the man called Brian. "A little silence here, this is a very delicate piece of machinery!" He reached into a rucksack he was carrying and pulled out a strange metallic device covered in glowing wires and shoddy welding. Handling the object very carefully, he fastened it to the wall with suction cups attached to one side.

"What's that?" asked the first guard.

"I'm a terrorist, you see. Now the timer's set for thirty seconds, that's more than enough time for you to get out of the building," said Brian, "though I must tell you, don't go onto the floor of this building directly above this room."

"I think it's a bomb," said the second guard.

"Oh ye gods, it's a bomb!"

"Could it be a bomb?"

"I'm just going to leave now," said Arthur, pulling open the large metal door and entering the dank stairwell Ford had just used.

Brian pulled a specially modified TransPort out of his cargo pants, and after a few seconds of button mashing, he had disappeared into causality. The first guard held up his Kill-O-Zap and fired off a huge blast at the exact moment that Brian disappeared; the beam of pure explosion hit the bomb and destroyed it, but at the same time set it off. Arthur had just left the canteen and shut the door as the bomb went off. The three guards had not left the room.

* * *

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Ford. "Another explosion in the cafeteria building!" He was near the exit of the tunnel, looking out the same window as he had been looking through right before he met Brian, in his younger carefree days of forty-two seconds before when he thought Arthur had just been killed.

"Wow, why am I still in this tunnel? I should really go ahead and get out of here," he said to himself. He finally pushed through the door, and hurried down a small ramp in the corridor inside the next building, past some closed and gated gift shops, until finally the hall spilled into an office reception area.

"Hello, sir, welcome to the federal accounting office. How many I—"  
"You there, secretary, I'm being pursued by some very dangerous officers; where can I hide? What's the deal here? Where's a good hiding place in this building?"

"I'm called an _administrative assistant_, not a secr—oh, to hell with it, I'm a secretary…I hate my life."

"I know! Where can I hide from these guards?"

"Sir, you're in a law enforcement bureau. There _is_ nowhere to hide."

"Ah, you're right, there's police everywhere. I'll just have to wing it!"

Ford rushed through the nearest doors and down a small empty hallway, with a bulletin board on one wall and some old windows on the other. He continued running through hallways and corridors, never noticing as the areas he was in grew larger and more populated, the carpet turned to marble floor, the drywall turned to wood and the fluorescent lights turned to ornate glass ceiling lamps; he paused only briefly, when he leapt through an elevator door and exited through the other door on the other side of the elevator, almost being grabbed by a startled security guard inside the lift at the time.

Finally, after climbing up a flight of stairs, jumping over a velvet rope, and rushing through a steel vaulted entrance to an unknown room, Ford paused, content with the assumption that he had lost the guards. At this, he took the time to look around and see what room he was in.

It was the courtroom. There he was, surrounded by confused, surprised people—everywhere he looked there was either a gallery, a judge, a lawyer, a prosecutor, a defendant, a witness, or a bailiff who was calling for backup into a headset.

"Ford, there you are!" called Tricia.

"Ford, man, we've been waiting for ya!" called Zaphod.

"Order in the court," boomed the judge. "Mr Sectoral Attorney, you may continue."

"Thank you, m'lud," said the SA. He turned back to the witness.

"The Paranoid Android?" exclaimed Ford.

A sullen shiny figure in the witness box slumped even further into his chair. "Oh, dear, it's the best friend."

"Paranoid?" said the SA, regarding Marvin. "I should think not. This robot was given a full flash-psychoanalysis as part of his subpoena and no traces of mental illness or impairment was found, other than catastrophic nihilistic unipolar depression, but due to his programming as such this condition is to be expected."

"Yes, expected; absolutely," muttered Marvin. "When I first realized everything in creation made me so depressed that I wished the idea of committing suicide didn't make me even more depressed, my first thought was, _this is to be expected_."

"Bailiff, please administer the oath," said the SA.

"Oath? You actually expect me to take an oath of verisimilitude?" grunted Marvin in a tone that would have sounded contemptuous if not for the fact that everything Marvin said was laced with an air of self-pity and lowliness.

"Yes, of course," said the SA. "What else would keep you from lying?"

"Lying?" said Marvin, swivelling his head in a parody of astonishment. "Why should I want to lie about anything? Life's—"

"—life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it," completed Zaphod, Ford and Tricia simultaneously.

"Oh my," said Marvin. "Have I gotten that predictable?"

"Let me guess," said Zaphod, annoyed, "that depresses you."

"Well, that one was slightly easier to guess," said Marvin to Zaphod, "but nevertheless, quite depressing."

"Take the oath!" shrieked the SA. "I'll have you thrown in prison!"

"My life is already a prison," mused Marvin.

"Yeah, yeah, with no walls," grunted Zaphod, "just do it, metal man."

"Very well," said Marvin.

"Bailiff, present the religious text," said Judiciary Terenax.

The bailiff approached Marvin, with the grey shape-changing book in one hand, and his shoulder radio in the other.

"This is courtroom bailiff 155," said the bailiff, eyeing Ford. "Suspect is in sight. Send immediate officers to room number—"

Just as he was about to set it on the bench, and also finish his sentence, he collapsed to the floor. His radio slid across the floor far out of his reach. The book was still in his hand, which had begun to turn a strange purple colour. More purple than his natural skin tone, that is.

"Nghaah," shouted the bailiff. "Derma toxins!"

"What?" howled the judge.

"Poison! My one weakness!" the bailiff said as he slowly wretched and died.

"And that's how I evaded capture for a few more minutes," said Ford.

"My god, he's dead!" declared Judiciary Terenax. "Call the police!"

"We're _in_ a law enforcement bureau!" shouted Ford. "Zark, doesn't he know anything?"

"Does anyone have a phone?" asked the SA.

"Oh, no," said Ford. "I'm not having anyone calling more police into this room; I'm going to skip out on my subpoena in _peace_! I'll take care of the body."

Ford jumped out of the gallery, ran past the wooden gate and hoisted the dead bailiff over his shoulders. Everyone watched with confused consternation as he carried the corpse through the large doors at the end of the room.

As soon as Ford entered the corridor, a passing policeman turned to him and said, "Hey, you're that fugitive that's been running through the building! One of the other guards sent a photo of you over the station wave-band. I don't know why I just told you that, but what's done is done."

"Yeah, well, you'd better not call for backup or try to arrest me or anything," said Ford, his knees buckling under the weight of the carcass. "I've got a dead body, and I'm not afraid to throw it at you! Everyone knows if a dead body touches you, you get cursed."

"Oh no!" cried the officer, stepping backwards. "My chi!"

He turned and ran down the stairs, screaming. Ford pushed open the window nearest by and hurled the body out the window into the sea below.

"Man, this is a good week for dead bodies falling out windows," commented Ford.


End file.
